Resolution
by Vega62a
Summary: Continuation of the MaiHiME series. A spring break trip to the beach exposes stilluntied threads both inside and outside of the lives of the HiME. Rated T for violence, language. Possible Shizxnat, Maixtate? Who knows! Chapter 27 now up!
1. Prologue: You'll get your kicks

My-Hime: Resolutions

Author's Notes:

No OOC Here, hopefully. Sadly, I only just finished the series, so the likelihood of all of my characters being perfectly IC is fairly slim. I'll do my best. Please let me know if I've slipped up somewhere.

A lot of the supporting characters, such as Chie Harada, are not well-developed within the series, and thus I have very little to work with when writing them. They will play relatively important roles in this story, so I'll try to take as few liberties with them as I can, but you'll see some of my own design in them.

In spite of Japanese culture, names will be written first-last, rather than the typical Japanese last-first. This is because as somebody who is not Japanese, it is less confusing for me.

Finally, rather than wasting your time by re-introducing characters you already know, I'm going to skip that phase. This is a specialized community, and as such, I assume you all know who I'm talking about when I say "Mai". You'll probably get a general physical description anyway, but don't be surprised if it's unintentional.

* * *

Thanks for reading!

Prologue

You'll get your kicks…

Mai Tokiha found herself quietly singing the old tune, familiar to many but to her still fairly novel, as route 167 from Toba became route 260 towards Goza. To her, it was really all the same—grass and sidebar flashed by, there was a slight dip as they took the exit, and then they were going west instead of south. Still, though, she found herself thinking of the old American song as the car she was fairly well crammed into entered the last leg of the journey from Fuka Gakuen to Goza Shirahama Beach.

"On Route sixty-six," she sang to a car full of dozing students, a cool window, and an inattentive driver. It was a song she'd come across not long ago in a round of lightning karaoke; as just another karaoke song, it should have been like a groupie to a pop star: Used once and then discarded into the recesses of her mind; but for some reason, it had stuck with her like few other songs had.

"It winds from Chicago to L.A., more than two thousand miles all the way."

Something about the perky, jazzy beat had simply enthralled her, the way few other songs had. Music had a way of doing that—enthralling her without regard to her "tastes." She had a feeling it was like that for everybody; no matter what "kind' of music you like, certain songs simply ensnared you, often wonderfully, sometimes dangerously.

_Who are those little girls in pain just trapped in castle of dark side of moon?_

Yes, often dangerously. She said nothing about it, but that song had been coming back to haunt her increasingly of late. That song and that life.

She expected that this, too, was normal. Life had a way of not going away. No matter how far into the future you looked, life was still life; indestructible in many ways. The boy sitting in the seat in front of her was living proof of this.

"Get your kicks on Route six-six."

Unfortunately, the only kick she was getting here, now, from this living proof was a soft, somehow defiant snore. She stared at the back of his head, at the faux-blonde hair spiking inelegantly out in all directions, and reflected on the fact that this bothered her more than it probably should have.

She twisted her neck back around to stare out the window of the brown conversion van that she and eleven other people were squeezed into, dismissing the thought,

("Now you'll go through Saint Louis, and Joplin Missouri, and Oklahoma City is mighty pretty,")

and felt something small and warm slide around her waist, something a little larger, and far hairier, press into the back of her neck, making it itch just a little. She heard a small voice murmur in a half-asleep stupor, "Mai sings pretty," before a wet line of what could only have been drool began a slow decent from the warm hairy spot into the depths of her orange tank-top. She stifled a yelp and grimaced, realizing that once Mikoto Minagi was attached to her and asleep, she was fairly well doomed to this fate until the girl woke up.

And still, her mood, morose at best, did not lift. It had been nagging at her since  
_your life ended_  
spring break had started; this melancholy stupor that set in only when she was by herself. She couldn't put a name on it, nor could she put a reason, try as she might, but that didn't it from dropping her gaze a little, from demolishing her easy smile, from sinking her shoulders when nobody was looking.

She turned her gaze away from the window and turned the small thing clinging stoically to her away from her neck and back, allowing her to bury her head in Mai's left breast and allowing Mai to lean against the seat, rest her head for a while. She looked down at Mikoto fondly, shook her head, and forced it through her consciousness: _You are going on a vacation. You are with everyone. You are with Yuuichi. You can't--_ she stopped, went back. _You are with everyone. You can't allow yourself to ruin your first spring break with your friends ever simply because some unknown depression is nagging at you. Be happy that you're here at all. _

"Mai," the braid at her breast murmured, apparently only nine-tenths asleep, "you stopped singing."

"Honestly," Natsuki murmured from the left side of their bench, surprising Mai. "That girl…" Mai hadn't known that Natsuki had been awake at all, let alone paying attention to Mai's miniature concert. She was resting her head against the window as Mai had been, but with her eyes closed, her arms folded loosely across her chest.

"It's okay," Mai said, feeling a smile work its way onto her face without her approval. "I really don't mind. I'm sorry I woke you."

"You didn't," Natsuki said, still not looking up.

"Couldn't sleep?" _Or didn't want to?_

"Mmm. I really enjoyed listening to you sing," A shade of a grin appeared, ruining Natsuki's well-crafted image of aloofness. "What was it?"

"Route sixty-six. It's by an American named Nat King Cole." She paused a moment to consider whether elaboration would bounce off of Natsuki's head or not, decided it probably would, and chose not to waste her breath.

"Well," Natsuki said as though Mai had said nothing at all (proving her point about the rubbery effect of Natsuki's ears quite nicely), "don't let me stop you."

"I wouldn't want to keep you up," Mai protested. Karaoke was one thing; singing privately for somebody quite another, in her mind.

"Like I said, I enjoyed it. Besides, it's not every day I'll get to hear you sing." This was a very careful way of saying, _Don't even think of draging me along on your excursions to that abysmal hell-pit you call the Karaoke shop. _

"You don't think so? Are you feeling all right, Natsuki?" This was a very careful way of saying, _Screw you, you're coming if I have to tie you to the back of the van and drag you there. _

"I'm feeling fine," Natsuki said, doing her best to feign ignorance of the subvocal exchange. Her voice rose a decibel or two higher as she concentrated on choosing her words carefully. "I just can't think of many places where I would be party to such a pleasant concert."

Mai smiled as pleasantly as her concert had apparently been. "I'm sure you'll be happily surprised at some point, Natsuki."

"Mmm," Natsuki repeated. "Maybe I will take a nap."

"I wouldn't want to keep you up."

"Wake me when we get there." Natsuki knew full well she would be doing no napping in this car. Cars made her uncomfortable.

"Mai," the small thing at Mai's bosom protested again. "Sing."

Mai sighed, looked out towards the window again, and did just that: "You see Amarillo," she sang, her voice quiet but not unpleasant, "Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; and don't forget Winona; Kingsman; Barstow; San Bernardino."

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that bastard of a grin back on Natsuki's face, and shook her head, both annoyed and amused, and all at once her fighting spirit came poking its head out of the layers of dust it had gathered from months of disuse. _Fine, _she thought with a little grin.

She grabbed Mikoto's braid and raised it to her mouth like a microphone—a specific microphone, in her mind. The girl yelped and jolted awake as Mai suddenly broke full-out into the first cover of the old Cole classic by a Japanese High School student in stinted English:

"Won't you get hip to this timely tip: When you make that California trip, get your kicks…," Yuuichi's snoring got a little bit more insistent: He was awake now; and with him came Shiho, napping on his shoulder, rubbing at her eyes groggily. Chie Harada woke easily to find she could barely contain a laugh, and only for the sake of the girl, Aoi Senou, still napping next to her. "On route sixty-six."

From the driver's seat, Midori Sugiura turned her head back—dangerously—towards the group and laughed, shouting, "Sing it, Mai!" She took her hands off of the steering wheel, to the visible chagrin of Reito Kanzaki, also up front—she was apparently now steering with her knees—and mimed a saxophone, swaying erratically in an impersonation of an inebriated jazz artist, and making bizarre pseudo-instrumental noises.

Mai felt the physical weight of depression lift off of her chest, and she laughed and once more pulled Mikoto's braid towards her lips:

"Won't you get hip to this timely tip: When you make that California trip, get your kicks…" her voice had increased to a near shout by this point, and Yuuichi snored a little louder, a little faster, as though to make up for it. Aoi finally broke out laughing, and Mai finished, in the booming voice she reserved for the karaoke stage and the karaoke stage alone, "On ROUUUUUUTE…" she flicked Yuuichi on the back of the head, and he finally whipped his head around and shouted, "What the hell are you doing?"

Her reply was short and succulent: With all of her might, she positively screamed, "SIXTEEEEE…SIX!"

This, and the ruckus that ensued, destroyed the group's chances of any sort of a peaceful ride. Tate Yuuichi, Shiho Minakata, Akane Higurashi and her boyfriend Kazu, Natsuki Kuga, Aoi Senou, Chie Harada, Reito Kanzaki, Mikoto Minagi, Midori Sugira, Shizuru Fujino, and, of course, Mai Tokiha, dissolved into various states of laughter and wakefulness, banter and serious discussion, violence and peace, and for a while, all was as it was best. In Mai's opinion, anyway.

* * *

The man in black followed the path of the conversion van with his sniper rifle, and the tall grass by the side of the road didn't make a sound as he brushed it. Specifically, he followed the light brown head of one of the girls in the back. His target. 

A very odd target, though. She couldn't have been more than eighteen. The youngest person he'd ever killed in the past had been twenty-five years old. It wasn't that he was necessarily _opposed _to the idea; only that before the age of thirty or so, most people didn't need to die so badly that somebody was willing to pay a price to have them killed by a professional.

Stranger yet, he supposed, was the fact that he hadn't been paid to kill her. He had been paid to watch her when she arrived, and notify somebody of it. Nothing more.

And he supposed that this was the time to do that. He supposed he was nothing more than a checkpoint for now; he had been put on retainer to his current employer, which meant that he was being paid a great deal of money to do just about anything his employer asked him to do. If that meant being a checkpoint, so be it. Maybe there were a hundred more like him and he wouldn't have to do any more work for this paycheck.

He leaned his head a little more to the right so that his ear touched his shoulder, triggering the small comlink inside. "Target has passed my location. Target is in the back seat, along with three other females of roughly the same age."

There was no reply for a moment, and then: "Confirmed. You can head back for the day. We'll be in touch."

The man in black let his sights track the van for a moment longer, and then sighed, relaxed.

"Of that, I have no doubt."


	2. 1: It’s been a while

Author's Notes

Fairly uneventful Prologue, as mine tend to be. Not a lot to say, except this:

I've not been flamed yet on this story, but as a preemptive strike: Please do not flame. Here, or anywhere. Anonymous flames here will be deleted. They are not helpful in the least, and are in fact counter-productive to writing well (confidence is important). Constructive criticism or honest opinions about your dislike of the story are perfectly welcome, but hyperbola in expressing the point really isn't warranted.

Thanks to the first reviewer, Sammyrose115! Whoooooo-ee! Applause and in response to your review…I'll do what I can. (But for being the first reviewer, I'll grant your request in this chapter, a little.)

Thanks kindly. And as always, thanks so much for reading! (If one were to look very closely, one might be able to observe Vega's small form dancing on top of a table with a "reader is god" shirt on rather than doing his writing).

* * *

Chapter one

It's been a while / My Letter #1

It was dark by the time the conversion van's headlights illuminated the lonely string of beachside cabins, but of them, only Midori was at all tired; the chaos within the van had gradually given way to casual, airy conversation, just loud and interesting enough to keep everybody awake—except, it seemed, for Midori, who nearly passed out at the wheel about an hour down Route 260. They had noticed when the van began sneaking towards the rather deep ditch by the side of the road, and it had started them shouting, which did nothing to wake the girl up. (Just) before they had died, Reito had managed to grab the wheel and convince Midori to pull over long enough to let him drive the rest of the way. It turned out that he was actually an adequate driver, which was lucky, since none of the rest of them knew a clutch from an emergency brake.

As Reito carefully slid the van into one of the few remaining parking slots, Mai turned to Mikoto. "Excited?"

"Excited!" the girl echoed cheerfully. "Excited, excited, excited!"

"Me too. I haven't had a vacation from work in…" Mai sucked her lip between her teeth and chewed a little pensively.

"In a long time," Shizuru Fujino said from the back seat, shaking her light-brown hair out of her face and stretching a little as the car jerked to a stop a little roughly. From the front seat, Reito shouted, "Sorry about that. I think I killed it."

"It's no problem," Shizuru replied politely, and then looked back at Mai. "You haven't stopped working since school was called back, have you?"

Mai frowned, still chewing her lip. "I guess not. I didn't actually _mean _to work that much, I just—"

"Mai just wanted to get away from me," Chie quipped as Midori groggily got out and opened the door for them. "She knows that if she doesn't, I'll never stop hounding her about Tate."

Both Mai and Tate coughed when she said this, though neither said anything. Mai got out, and as soon as she did, she heard Aoi and Chie burst out laughing. _I thought she said she would lay off for the trip, _Mai thought. _I told her I'd tell her when something happened. Not that she wouldn't know before _I _did if something happened between us. _

In actuality, the situation between Tate and Mai had remained more or less in stasis since last year: Mai had a half-kiss and a spur-of-the-moment declaration by the boy of, "I love Mai!", both of which had been acquired at around the same time, to treasure, and that was it. There had been nothing since. It was hard, with Shiho attached to his arm _all the time_, clinging

_like a stubborn baby_

like a stubborn cold to him, undoubtedly more than a little to make sure that what Mai had was all she would ever have with the boy. Shiho had Tate's image firmly embedded within her heart, and as far as she was concerned, he was hers so long as he didn't fling her off. Mai bore it with all the patience that she had learned over seventeen years of taking care of her sick brother, but sometimes, she just wanted to…  
_smack the little—_  
to do something that she would most certainly regret for the rest of her life, and that she would thus never even consider actually doing, ever.

Her half-pensive state was disturbed, rather rudely, as thestubborn _(baby) _cold's small pink shoe impacted solidly on her rear, half-knocking her into the car ahead of her.

"Move, please!" came the ex-cripple's cheery voice as Mai struggled to recover her temper and her bearings at the same time. Shortly after, Tate chided her as an exasperated parent or brother might, but not harshly. _Never harshly. _

Mai grumbled a, "Sorry," and stepped aside, rubbing her now-aching rump with one hand as the rest of the car piled out quickly, spreading out and stretching with the forced isolation one can only be grateful of after spending four or five hours in a car with your best friends. Reito walked around to the back and opened up the full trunk as Mikoto located Mai and started rubbing the older girl's rump, too.

Mai's eyes flew open and her attention flew back into the present, and she jumped into the air with a startled cry as Mikoto burst out laughing again. "Are you excited?" the little girl quipped, and for a moment, Mai stared at her, dumbfounded by her rare display of sharp verbal wit. Then she got over it and tore off after the little shit, who took off running, throwing her arms up in the air and shouting, "Mai's excited, all right, yes she is!"

Reito laughed in an incestuously brotherly way, walking over to Tate. The fake-blonde was presently being made to lug not only his luggage, but Shiho and _her _luggage, and the strain showed on his face. Even Kendo, which was strenuous by its very nature, was not enough to prepare him for the torment on his back that was Shiho _and _her luggage.

"I suppose we're relatively secluded, then, eh Tate?" he said to the boy, grinning with pursed lips. "Being two of the only three males on the trip."

"I suppose," Tate replied a little guardedly, as he had been the boy since Mai and he had begun doing…whatever it was they were doing. Reito had been turned down by Mai, and while he didn't display any outward malice at the rejection, that meant very little. "Why?"

"Oh, just thinking about our old roommate days. You know…"

Tate did. Reito and he had, as most male roommates did, an unspoken agreement to sod off if there was a signal left on the door that the other was in there with a girl, in private. Did this mean Reito was planning on…with Mai? Or somebody else?

"Sure. Not a problem. Just leave my _shinai _on the door. It's a good reminder for me to practice. Who…?"

"Who knows?" Reito said with a shrug. Outwardly, he was a very brotherly figure, very benevolent, kind, and intelligent, but Tate knew from experience that he was a little bit of a letch on the inside. He didn't let it show often, and never to women, but guys could usually tell who was who among even the most guarded of them.

"What are you guys talking about?" Shiho asked from Tate's back, sounding as confused as Tate was, though for entirely different reasons. He had entirely forgotten she was back there for a second, obviously considering the screaming strain on his back to be just another ugly face of gravity.

"I'm just speaking Guy at Tate," Reito said, smiling warmly. "Most civilized beings don't understand the language."

"You're weird."

"Forgive me," Reito said, bowing slightly. "You may, however, wish to let go of Tate before his back snaps. You're as beautiful and trim as a lady, but I think your brother is about to die. He needs to work harder at Kendo."

"Shiho, take your luggage and go follow the girls, okay?" Tate pointed at the cabin they were to inhabit, a small log cabin like all the others, mounted on small risers with a long stairway and a ramp leading to the doorway, and one window per face. "I need a rest."

"Hmph," Shiho grimaced, a little disheartened. She dropped off his back, though, and did as he asked. After she was out of earshot, Tate looked the other boy in the eye. "Sometimes I think she understands a lot more than she lets on."

"Almost certainly. She is very clever, even if she never shows it; I'm sorry if I was too blunt."

"I don't think she understood that, but she certainly understood that we wanted to get rid of her, and she'll give me hell for it. So make it fast."

"Denying it would be useless, I suppose. I want to talk to you openly."

"I knew that."

Reito smiled humbly. "I'd like to make amends with you; we know that if we both actively seek Mai's affections, no good will come of us sleeping in the same room with only Kazu to buffer us. Therefore, I would like to propose that for the trip, neither of us make any overtures towards her."

Tate frowned. Not that he thought it would make a difference, but something about it irked him. Maybe the way Reito said it, so easily and without reservation. Nonetheless, he nodded. In truth, he missed the boy, who had acted as something of a father-figure for him during the year they'd roomed together, all the way up until the point where he was revealed to be an ancient, evil creature stealing Reito's body. "All right. I won't make any moves on Mai if you won't." Not that it would matter. Shiho would be sleeping in the next room, so his chances of sneaking off with her even if she was the sneaking-off type were nil.

Even so…

Reito stuck his hand out, and Tate took it, pumped it once. "I'm glad you…you know."

"I know. Things have been a little awkward between us, and we both know why. Until we settle into this, they will remain that way, and I don't like that."

"Me either."

"I'll inform Kazuya when I get a chance."

They nodded at each other, and then shouldered their bags, closed the trunk, and locked the doors.

* * *

The cabin was as small inside as it was outside, but at least it had two bathrooms. It was essentially a square space divided into two rectangles, separated by a thick wall. Both sections were identical, containing an entryway, a bedroom, and a bathroom with a shower. The girls slept in one, the boys in the other. It was cheap and still proper—two things one did not often find in coed lodgings.

It was also, Natsuki Kuga noted, completely empty. Her senses were still keen, even after all the time it had been since she'd fought…well, anything, and she heard nothing coming from any orifice of the cabin. How could that be? Hadn't she just stepped out for a little air? Where had everybody gone?

No. Not completely empty. Somebody was breathing heavily in the girl's bedroom. Breathing heavily and sobbing.

She wished she had a gun. She had one in her bag, one which her formerly all-encompassing streak of paranoia had forced her to go out and buy off of one of her old connections—guns were illegal in Japan—almost the week after she'd lost her powers (as everyone else had) as a HiME, but that was also _in _the room. Buried deep in her bag.

Nothing to do, though, but investigate. She stepped in the door and removed her shoes, or tried to: She had no shoes to remove. That wasn't right; she must have had shoes, she had just been outside. The fact, however, remained that her feet were bare, and a little chilly. She felt a draft on her crotch, and closed the door behind her.

She stepped inside and walked quietly along the well-sanded floor, which creaked under her weight only a little, towards the bedroom she shared with eight other people, and opened the door quietly, not wanting to disturb any of them on the off-chance that they _were _there.

Only none of them were there. Just as she'd observed, the place was completely empty.

_What the hell is…_

No, not completely empty. Just as she'd observed. There was one person at the corner of the room, buried deep inside of a sleeping bag. All she could see was a fluff of light brown hair sticking out of the opening.

_Shizuru. _This was rapidly becoming dangerous. Even more so as the bag began to move towards her, and then slowly slid off of the thin, pretty girl, revealing her to be completely naked. Natsuki's eyes widened in surprise, and she quickly lowered her gaze as the girl moved soundlessly across the bedroom towards her.

Before Natsuki could move further, though, Shizuru was on her, wrapping her arms around the shorter girl's waist, pressing her bare breasts against her, warm and soft…

_Warm?  
Soft?_

Natsuki looked down and found herself to be completely naked. She cried out in surprise, and Shizuru covered Natsuki's mouth with hers, her eyes wide open, staring into Natsuki's, which widened in  
_lust_  
fear.

Natsuki pulled her mouth away quickly, embarrassed and blushing, and shouted, "Shizuru—"

_Shizuru's head exploding, her pretty brown hair decorating the carpet across the room—_

Natsuki sat bolt upright and shouted, "No!"

"Natsuki," Chie said groggily, "Keep it down. Some of us are trying to sleep."

Natsuki froze, looking around at the eight girls around her as her heart raced madly in her chest and she struggled to separate the dream from what was real.

She looked over at Shizuru, sleeping peacefully in the corner with a small smile on her face, and exhaled heavily, forcing herself to relax, to sleep again.

It didn't work. She didn't go back to sleep that night.


	3. 2: So here it goes

Author's notes:

Reviewer's corner:

Thanks to all who reviewed: Duster, Peccatus Poena, Sei-so, xSojix, youneverknow, and Saron!

(Still possible to observe Veg dancing; he seems to have found some sort of broomstick and he appears to be dancing with it now. If he's not inebriated, this is very creepy. However, the shirt still remains: "Reader is God")

Sorry for the slow-ness. Please stick with me; I think you'll enjoy it. My eternal thanks go out to those who do. You guys rock, and you know it; I couldn't do what I do without your encouragement, and I appreciate it.

As always, thanks for reading!

(To be honest, I hadn't intended this to be a shiznat originally, but the more I research it and pay attention to the subtle tells in Mai-HiME, the more it fascinates me.)

(Also, I'm under the impression that Reito graduated at the end of Mai-HiME. If I'm wrong about this, could somebody tell me about it? Thanks!)

Oh yeah, and a disclaimer: I don't own Mai-HiME. I do, however, own the Man in Black, which means that I actually own Will Smith. (Because he makes 'dis look goooood).

* * *

Chapter two

So here it goes / This is my letter (to you)

Unfortunately for the man in black, he was only afforded about six hours of rest (in an admittedly fancy hotel) between the time his assignment pointing guns at girls in vans ended and the time the phone rang.

The man in black woke up very slowly, but picked the phone up very quickly, an old habit, one that had lost him a contract or two back on the road. "Yeah? It's me." He had rehearsed this a long time ago, during what he dubbed his lazy years—the period of unrest within the Middle East and the recent group of Sino-Russian skirmishes. Times when contracts came really easily, and they were all the same: "Kill the generic leader figure while he's up giving a generic rousing speech to demoralize the generic enemy troops." All he really needed was a location, which they usually uploaded to his palm pilot.

The voice was the same as it had been before: Scratchy and clipped. A voice that had better things to do than talk to some impudent sniper. _Asshole. _"You will meet with your partner at the location we are transmitting to you. Bring your equipment and food for a stakeout. If either one of you dies, we will shoot the other."

Click, and that was it. _If either of you dies, we'll shoot the other. _This was unusual for him, but then, this was an unusual job.

_It's because this is a low-risk assignment. I saw kids in that car; if one of us dies, it's because the other one shot him; obviously, scratch-ass on the other end of the phone and the bank account wants to make sure none of us turn tail and split with his cash. He sounds like the kind of scratchy-ass that has the cash to make good on it, too._

The man in black hoisted himself out of bed and scratched his own ass, half for the poetic justice of the whole thing and half because it itched. He supposed he had time for a shower. Besides, it had been forever since he'd worked with a partner, and god damn if he wasn't going to make a good impression.

Besides, if it was like any other stakeout, it would be the last shower he'd take in several days. He sniffed at his pits, and realized that he could barely stand himself as it was; he supposed by the time the stakeout was over, his stench alone could summon devils, the angry kind shouting at him to give back their brimstone.

He stripped off his black one-piecer and threw it on the plush bed, walked naked to the fancy bathroom with the spit-shined pearl-colored tile, stepped into the spacious, gold-rimmed shower, and turned on the tap, which took forever to warm up just like it did in every other goddamned hotel on the planet.

He stood in the cold spray anyway, mind filled with a bunch of half-images, like photograph negatives. He didn't hear his wi-fi palm pilot beep, informing him that he had New Messages, nor did he see that it helpfully asked him, Would You Like to Read or Ignore?

If he'd had his way, he'd probably have hit 'ignore.'

* * *

Mai sat up, not unable to sleep but certainly possessing no desire to rest; she felt that she wasn't finished yet with the day, even though the day was almost finished with her. She knew what she had to do, too.

But why? Why do it at all? She felt as though this specific thing, this thing she did with Tate almost nightly, was something best left for school; best left for a time when she wasn't crammed in with eight other girls, several of whom, _(Chie)_ though she had no desire to name names, were extremely nosy. What would they say if they found her doing this? Would they call her a letch? A weirdo?

Or even worse, would they call her a hopeless romantic?

She was already up. She hadn't even realized it. She had to shake Mikoto off of her, but the girl didn't even stir. They were still roommates, Mai still having a year to go at Fuka Gakuen before she graduated, and sleeping together had become so ingrained in their routines that they slept far more soundly—completely so, in fact—than any two people sleeping together should.

Why did she even bother, though? She wanted to sit back down and go back to sleep, suddenly. Nothing was ever accomplished. She was like a fish swimming against a river of her own  
_cowardace_  
inhibition; unless something altered the current, nothing could ever change.

And wasn't that for the best? Wasn't that the least painful for…well, for Tate and Shiho? Sure, he participated in their little ritual every night, but she was almost certain that he was torn between her and Shiho. After all, that little girl clung onto him like a dustbunny clung to a balloon, but _he let her. _

He let her do it. He could push her away, but he didn't.

She looked over at Shiho, grabbed her phone out of her bag without intending to.

There were nine girls in the room, and with one exception, they all slept in even rows of three, their sleeping bags stretched out like slashes on a prison wall, counting the years away: Chie, Aoi, and Akane; Mai, Mikoto (who hardly counted), and Midori; and Shizuru and Natsuki.

And there was Shiho, who slept apart from the rows, in a corner. By herself. _She looks so…lonely._

_And why shouldn't she be? She's vicious, cruel, and stubborn. _

_And lonely. _

_She's conniving! _

_And lonely._

_Mean!_

_And lonely._

And then, unbidden, certainly unintentional: _Tate is so…kind. _

_You can't keep doing this to him. You have your time, and it's now. This is the changing of the current. You can get away any time you want. You could ask him to leave with you, right now, and he might. He might just._

She knew she was right. It was enough for a start.

* * *

Tate slept as fitfully as he ever did. Unbeknownst even to his former roommate, Tate was a closet insomniac, and had been ever since Shiho had had her "accident." He usually slept more or less through the night, but it was unrestful, often only a half-sleep. He only got about three hours of "real" sleep per night, which meant that he ran on adrenaline most of the day. This was good, because it encouraged a lack of coherent thought, which he needed right now. Saying nothing of the quick temper and lack of short-term memory, it actually worked out fairly well for him.

Except during the night. At night, he had to pretend that he wasn't an insomniac; had to feign sleep so that his roommate wouldn't ask why he never slept. Come nighttime, he would go through the motions, just as had here, of preparing for sleep, but instead of dropping off after a half hour, as Reito could, he would simply stare at his pillow, at the floor, at the ceiling, and think. Come nighttime, his brain kicked in again, in a way it couldn't during the daytime, and he was subject to his thoughts for four solid hours, condemned by his fear of being worried over to spend his nocturnal waking hours in what he could honestly describe as a hell of his own invention.

Not that his thoughts were all entirely negative, nor that even half of them were. What was so torturous about the whole experience was the sheer…scale of it all. Everything that he had thought about during the day, or rather, everything that he would have thought about were he gifted with coherent thought as his peers were, seemed to come rushing back to smack him in the face as soon as he closed his eyes and turned out the lights. A lot of it was inane, stupid, useless, and he was able to discard it as he would during the day; but a lot of it wasn't, too.

He supposed that was because a lot of it had to do with Mai. Taken in little doses of disappointment, it wasn't so bad: Mai smiling as they passed in a hallway but not saying anything because of the pink-haired thing latched onto his arm; the two of them sitting so close in class, but unable to reach out and connect because of the other thirty kids in their way; Mai, calling him from her dorm, almost every night without fail. Mai, saying nothing on that open phone line, simply listening to him breathe, too frightened, or perhaps too reserved for anything more.

His phone was buzzing and he didn't even realize it. He grimaced, quietly stood from his sleeping bag, (faking grogginess still escaped him) and exited the room, went to lean against the wall that separated the girls' abode from his. He took a quick peek at the caller.

_Mai Tokiha, _it said.

His stomach dropped as he thought of the agreement he and Reito had made. _But, if I'm not talking to her, it doesn't count, does it? _

He flipped the phone open and put it to his ear, the cold plastic making his ear prickle a little.

"Hello," he said.

* * *

"Hello," Tate said. It was no longer a question as it had been when she had started calling him like this. At first, Mai was certain she had really intended to say something; her problem was that she never knew what to say. She didn't want to be inappropriate, but…weren't relationships inappropriate by their very nature? Looking at Kazu and Akane, she wouldn't have thought so, but she understood that she knew nothing of what they did in private, either. For all she knew, they had already eloped.

As she thought about this and heard an exhalation from Tate settle into the phone, a thought of the boy eloping with her rose to the top of her head, and a healthy blush broke out on her cheeks. She settled against the wall that separated the boys' abode from hers, and Tate's breathing began to fill her ears.

She had never said anything to him. Never.

Because of that  
_bitch_  
girl? _(She shook her head, remembering what she'd thought earlier: _Lonely.Because of everyone else? Because she wasn't honestly sure that she was  
_not a coward_  
ready for a relationship? If she had really wanted to, she could have asked him to sneak out after-hours and meet her, and they could have  
_eloped_  
been by themselves for a while. Done what they had been unable to do during the daylight. She knew he didn't sleep much; she had called him at some very odd hours, and he had never sounded even the slightest bit groggy when he answered.

_He inhales. She inhales. He exhales. She exhales. _

_The current changes out here_. She didn't know where he was right now, but unless he was out on a walk, he was less than twenty meters from her in any direction. He could sneak out without anybody noticing. All she had to do was say something. Three words; _lets go out_…or a few more choice, more intimate words…and that would be it. Maybe nobody would ever even know.

Or maybe she wouldn't care if they did. She felt resolve creep back into her throat, she felt the image of Shiho, who was just…_lonely_…back into her eyes. Maybe she would feel differently tomorrow, when she'd rested, but for now…

She opened her mouth. She could do it. She was not a coward. She was not a coward. She was not a coward. _I am not a coward. _

Her throat worked for a moment, and she made a small, incoherent noise. She thought of something that Shiho had said to her, one of the few things she had ever said to her, about a month after the HiME star had disappeared.

_What do you even like about him, anyway? _In the logic of a child who had placed her claim on the boy, Mai was sure it made perfect sense, even if she knew she could have turned the question right back on the girl. She hadn't, of course.

But even so…

_I like the way he doesn't wish me luck when he's being sincere. I like the way he thinks…no, he _knows _I can take care of myself. _

"Le…"

* * *

Tate's eyes widened in alarm and his heart seized up in his chest, and suddenly, he was both very anxious and very tired. He felt sleep begin to creep up on him, and he shook it away, cursing his body for being, for lack of a better description, fucking stupid.

He was breathing more heavily now, but he didn't dare speak. In fact, his jaw was clamped shut, so he couldn't have spoken had he wanted to. But right now, talking was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted _her _to speak. He said "hello" and "goodbye" to her when she called like this; he supposed he was well within his rights to be a little resentful that she didn't say anything to _him_.

But he wasn't. He was just tired all over. He had to brace himself against the wall with his fist, which was rapidly, painfully curling into itself.

_Please say something, Mai._

* * *

_I like the way he grins when he thinks he's got me by my tail. I like the way he still grins when it turns out he doesn't. _

"Let…"

There had been a song Takumi had sent her on a CD from the hospital in America; she didn't know the name of the song or the band, but it had left a profound impression on her. She could sing it as well as she could sing _Route 66; _which was so-so, at best, but even so...

She thought about how good she felt when she sang karaoke. When she _sang, _in general. Music had a power no writer or painter had ever been able to imitate.

She thought about how good she felt when he smiled when she sang karaoke. When he felt her power. She wasn't ready yet, and that was okay with her. She could do this instead.

"_Letter._"

She heard his breath catch, and then there was silence for a moment. Something cracked in the house, and she jumped; it took her a moment to settle herself down. _Only the house settling. _

She gathered that resolve back up. "Here it goes," she sang quietly, imitating the English as well as she could, "this is my letter."

* * *

She was _singing. _It was barely audible, but she was _singing. _

He loved it when she sang. Suddenly, the powerful, intense disappointment that had made him lose control and pound the wall vanished, and he found his attention entirely settled on that voice.

_On that voice._

"Hope you're all right…it's been rough for me." Her voice was soft and mournful, and that was a cheery way of describing it.

"Thinking all night about the place I'd be," this was him to a tee. He felt his throat lock up, and was very glad, suddenly, of his silence. Her next line, though, was as strained as his voice would have been; this surprised him a little, too. "If I maybe just did a little bit more you might have let me…"

She stopped.

_You might have let me what?_

_You might have let me love you?_

_You might have let me be with you?_

It nagged at him the way little things did on very little sleep. A lot.

Then, silence. _What is it?_

Then, a giggle.

He snapped. "What?" he whisper-shouted. "You might have let me what?"

Another giggle, and then another sniff, and she started singing again. "If I maybe just did a little bit more…you might have let me become a man for sure."

Something popped in his head. Maybe it was a piece of his sanity. The two of them dissolved into giggles, as quietly as they could, sinking into the wall and wiping at their eyes, glad that nobody could see them.

They sat there for a long time afterward, listening to each other breathe, and he felt that even if they were dating, or –_perish the thought—_an old, married couple, that at this moment, they would be doing exactly the same thing that they were doing now. He felt perfectly, wholly content.

Oddly enough, so did she. They went to sleep that way, and while Tate woke up much earlier than she did, neither of them woke until morning.

* * *

Author's End Note:

I guess that was a little corny, huh? That's kind of how I envision their relationship playing out up to this point, and the phone thing is of my own invention, a little bit of romantic flare on my part.

Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading; chapter 3 will probably be up in a little while. Not tomorrow, because I'll have no internet, but maybe the next day.

My apologies if it's not as good as the first two chapters though ;; no shiznat here. There are going to be multiple relationships for me to build on, plus the whole "plot" thing.

As always, thanks for reading!


	4. 3: Shoot me again

Author's notes

Reviewer's corner:

I agree, corny is sometimes good. Sorry, I don't have the names of the reviewers up this time; next time, I'll just have to work extra hard. Ooh-rah. (None of them want to show up on Effnet, so I see only eight though I know there are 13, and I stupidly emptied the junk mail folder that contained the review notices Effnet so graciously provided. All I remembered was that one little piece.)

Due to the circumstances—namely, that you have to read this in updates, as I write it, and on a computer screen, this book will not be as long or well-developed as I hoped it would be; I'll probably cut out a lot of relatively fluffy scenes and thus detract some from the continuity of the story (that is, it will likely skip scenes that would be considered totally unnecessary, but that I would probably cover simply for a feel of flow in another book). This, I think, is for the best, as much as I hate to do it. I think all of you would find it more or less unreadable if every third update or so contributed nothing to the meat of the story.

The bulk of this was written on the road from my hometown to my university, about a five hour trip. I'm also listening to my new Metallica CD instead of my usual easy-listening writing mix, which contains a lot of music from Mai-HiME, and a few ballad-style metal songs. I'm not sure how this will affect the writing, but I feel that it will. Maybe you guys can tell me. I'm going to keep going with the Reviewer's Corner, and I'll start replying to a couple choice reviews as I did above (though I will still ignore/delete flames).

I'm writing such extensive author's notes because I'm suffering from a little bit of writers block; probably because I don't feel too hot about leaving home again. I'm rambling. Sorry. Sort of.

Okay. On with the show. Take _this,_ writer's block!

Disclaimer: I don't own Mai-HiME or Mai-Otome. I am, however, plotting World Domination to rectify this. Give me some time.

* * *

Chapter 3

Shoot me again

The problem with woodland stakeouts, the man in black thought, was that you had to walk to them. And the problem with being a sniper on a woodland stakeout was that your gear was really fucking heavy. Dressed in camouflage with his sleeves rolled up to perpetrate the image of being a hiker, he carried a PSG-1 sniper rifle, a 64x zoom scope, and two days worth of granola bars and water in an extremely oversized backpack, covered with a tarp.

The tarp itself was his own personal stakeout invention: The tarp was covered in the same kind of paper that you peeled off of the edge of stickers, because the tarp was itself a sticker. In a pinch, he could (and he had in the past) peel off the paper to reveal a layer of glue, which he could essentially drag through the woods or desert to pick up loose sand or foliage. He could then hide under it for as long as he needed to, provided he didn't overheat or suffocate.

Another one of those things he had used to cover his ass during the lazy years. It beat the hell out of booze, or it would have if he'd actually let the tarp take the place of booze. Not that a tarp could really help loneliness like the booze had.

The man in camouflage with black underneath hiked through the night, with only a flashlight and a GPS-equipped palm pilot to guide him to some remote site that a certain asshole with a scratchy voice had decided was the best point to observe what he could only ascertain was a group of kids on a spring vacation.

_Oh, how the mighty have fallen, _he thought.

--

Chie always dreamed. Tonight was no different.

_A figure stands outside of the cabin, looking in at her. She meets his eye for a moment. The figure is large and predatory, and she hears more on their way._

_More of what, though?_

_More monsters. They're everywhere. The sand is alive with them. _

_He looks away. _

_"Kill her."_

Chie always dreamed. Tonight was no different.

* * *

In spite of this, Chie woke rather comfortably, if slowly. She was legendary for her ability to remain asleep for an hour after she awoke, in fact. Eyes still closed, she yawned powerfully, sniffing the air and finding it bearing the scent of rice and some sort of broth. She sniffed again, decided it was miso broth, and smiled happily as only the half-asleep could at something as simple, if delicious, as miso broth.

All and all, she was having a hell of a day, considering it was only about a minute long.

Then she opened her eyes and found herself staring into cleavage that seemed, at that half-delusional, groggy moment, to be about a mile wide. She half-yelped in alarm, and then restrained herself, forcing herself to think clearly: _If this cabin has indeed been invaded by cleavage monsters from the deepest pits of hell, _she thought, _the first thing to do will not be to scream and wake what appears to be sleeping. Think clearly:_ _If somebody is cooking outside, there must be a knife out there, or some fire at least. Cleavage monsters fear fire, don't they?_

"Chie, is it time to get up already?" the cleavage monster murmured, and Chie froze. This monster was devious: It sounded remarkably like her close friend, Aoi Senou. _That clever bastard, _she cursed, eyes never leaving her foe.

"Chie?" the voice was a little clearer now. "Um. What are you looking at?"

Maybe it _was _Aoi. Maybe she had been captured by the enemy? She decided to risk speech. "Don't worry, Aoi. I have the enemy in my sights," she said, her voice strangely muddled, like somebody who was half-asleep. "It doesn't seem to be moving; so long as it doesn't move, we can figure out a way to get you out of there."

"Um, Chie? Are you okay?" Aoi's voice was completely awake at this point, and a little confused, a little worried.

"Don't worry about me. If you see your chance, run and warn the others."

The enemy shifted downwards, and Aoi's face appeared; this time Chie actually _did _yelp, shouting Aoi's name in alarm.

"Are you sure you're alright, Chie?" Aoi asked.

Chie sat up and observed Aoi, by herself, wearing a loose, white shirt, which she was absently shifting upwards towards her neck to cover herself. Chie blinked, shook her head, and shoved her dream away. What_ had _she dreamed about that had caused her to think that Aoi's…that Aoi had been a monster out to kill her? "I'm good. Sorry. Must have had a nightmare."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Aoi said. "Was it very bad?"

"It was…"

_monster  
kill her_

"It was awful. I dreamt that your baby-feeders were coming to EAT ME!" Chie shouted this last, and Aoi went beet-red. "Bwargh! God, they're coming for me! Won't somebody save me?"

People were beginning to awake at this, which was all right, in Chie's mind: If breakfast was being served soon, then she was doing them a favor by waking them all up before Mikoto, who was suspiciously absent, ate it all. Not that Chie herself would ever dream of doing just such a thing. Oh, no.

Mai, too, was absent; she was probably cooking. She had heard that Mai was an excellent cook, though she'd never had the opportunity to sample her culinary delights herself. She supposed that this was to change shortly.

"Stop it, Chie!" Aoi half-squealed, going even redder, if possible. "Get out of here!"

"I will do no such thing. Not while the enemy still lurks nearby." She turned to Shizuru, who was rubbing her eyes calmly as she sat up. "Get your hunting gear, Shizuru. We're going—" her stomach loudly informed her that she would be sampling Mai's culinary delights _very _soon or she would be in very deep trouble with several of the higher-ups. "Whups. Looks like I'm just going to have to stick to foraging for now."

She stood up, still in her pajamas, which consisted of a loose white tee-shirt and panties (it was too hot for anything long), and slid open the thick wooden and paper door separating them from the girls' entryway, and found the source of the wonderful smells: Out on the beach, not ten meters off and clearly visible from where she stood, somebody had built an old-fashioned campfire. Hanging over it, supported by a metal rod attached by two others to the ground, was a pot full of miso. The rice was next to it, already cooked. It smelled even better with the door open. She imagined that anyone else staying on that beachside lodge was going apeshit with hunger about now. Standing next to it, stirring it slowly, was Mai. She grinned, waved, and for a second, Chie thought she was the one being waved at.

Until, anyway, Tate walked out from the male side, waved back, stepped out the door without his shoes. He realized he was missing them about three steps later as the hot sand burned his feet, and he whirled around and went back for the cabin.

Unfortunately, with the door open, it was entirely possible for him to observe Chie standing there in a tee-shirt and panties. And as he looked up from putting his shoes on, he did just that. He went instantly red, and Chie half-shrieked as her hands flew to cover her legs.

Shiho moved so quickly that it was barely possible to observe her: Apparently standing behind Chie, also summoned by the scent of food, Shiho's eyes locked onto her "Big brother" as his locked onto the copious amount of slim, white leg Chie was flashing at him; enraged, emboldened, or perhaps simply stupid, tearing off towards him at full tilt, her own baggy tee-shirt flaring out behind her; a solid leap, with intent to kill, and then the two of them were falling. Tate caught the brunt of it; he landed more than half off of the platform and fell down three steps into the burning sand that he had been running to escape; Shiho simply bounced onto his head, and there was a good two-second delay between the time she did and the time her tee-shirt settled back firmly on her torso.

If it was possible for Tate to be any more red, the probability of such an event could only have been described using abstract mathematics.

"Just _what_ were you staring at?" Shiho demanded as the dust settled around Tate's head. When she was referring to, he wasn't certain; to be fair, at that point, he was certain of only two things: His head hurt, a lot; and he was completely unable to speak.

"I…I wa…I buh…bu…lu…"

Chie laughed from her vantage point. "He was staring at my hot legs, Shiho!" she shouted at her. "They're completely irresistible!"

This didn't help; Shiho knocked Tate's already aching head with the flat of her palm, and he groaned. "Let up, Shiho. My head is killing me."

"You'd best get off of your big brother," Reito said from the doorway to the men's bedroom. "Otherwise, he's probably going to die of heat stroke down there. I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, did you, Tate?"

Tate sputtered for a moment. "I…uh…no, I didn't. Of course I didn't."

Shiho stared at him with eyes that could kill given were they given appendages of any sort for a moment, and he gave her his most winning smile. Which, to be fair, was saying very little when the back of his neck was in searing pain as he spoke.

"Fine," she grumbled, and got off of him. He sat up faster than anyone Chie had ever seen before, and after a moment of what could only have been consideration, took off for the ocean, screaming, "HOT!" all the way. Reito, fully dressed in swimming trunks and a tasteful Hawaiian shirt, walked out towards where Mai and Mikoto were cooking, turning back only to grin a little at Chie, informing her gently that she was still standing there in her panties. As he did this, Shiho marched past Chie, giving her the glaring of her life, in Shiho's opinion. Chie would have thought her opinion was vastly overrated, if she had been thinking about it.

She wasn't. Her eyes were locked onto Reito's, and for a second, she felt as though she was in a trance, unable to look away. His eyes were neutral and level, and hers were too, but still, something…

_monster  
kill  
eye_

wasn't right in her mind. Maybe she was just hungry. Either way it wasn't a feeling she wholly enjoyed. As soon as he turned from her, she did the same, stepping back into the room as quickly as her dignity would allow, suddenly a little pale.

Aoi, who had been up until now watching the entire endeavor, looked at her with some concern. "Are you _sure _you're okay?" she asked one more time. "You look really pale. Are you running a temperature?"

Chie instinctively placed the palm of her hand on her forehead, finding it cool as it ever was; Chie's circulation wasn't great anyway. "I'm fine."

Aoi placed her hand on Chie's forehead anyway, and Chie leaned into it, suddenly tired all over again. "Can't I just go back to sleep? I was having such a good day."

"Why? What's wrong now?"

_What is wrong?_

_Nothing I saw in Reito's eyes scared me. He's a handsome, generally uninterested male that does more or less nothing for or to me. But something I saw_

_monster  
kill  
eye  
sand_

_in…was it in my dream? I don't remember._

Her stomach informed her more insistently that time that if she didn't hustle and get some food, it was going to start gnawing at her colon.

"Forget about it. Your cleavage just scared me is all."

"My…" Aoi sputtered a bit, covering the neck of her shirt unnecessarily. "What are you on about?"

Chie shook her head, looked outside at the

s_and _

ocean again. It was too nice of a day to spoil just because a cute guy saw her panties. _Even if he is Mai's. Sort of. _She grinned.

"I told you before! Your baby-feeders are out to EAT ME!" She tackled Aoi into her sleeping bag and laughed, and after a few seconds, Aoi laughed too.

* * *

The man in black reached his "perfect sniping position" just as the sun was peeking above the horizon, trying to decide if today was going to be just another day, or the long-feared day of eternal night like all the doomsday screamers had been predicting for years. Finding that the sky was still blue, the grass was still green in a few parts of the world, Enrique Iglesias was still in the closet, and there were still a few people smiling and a few people shitting, it decided to allow the human race another day on its planet.

There was another man in black waiting for him, except this man in black was actually a man in green camouflage. Like him, but he bet this guy didn't have a black suit underneath.

"Howdy," he nodded to the other man, who didn't look up. The other man was holding a G3A3 sniper rifle with the largest scope the man in black had ever seen, aiming it at the cabin where his targets were staying. "What a wonderful day to lay around in the grass pointing guns at kids, eh?"

The man in green still didn't look up. "Are you Minoru Alder?" he asked. His voice was a little dry, a little scratchy, like he hadn't had anything to drink all day.

Minoru Alder, the man in black, nodded. "And you must be Nori Ikimasu."

"Mm. Orders are only to observe today. You go over to the other hill and keep an eye on the girls' cabin. Make verbal notes every time you see anything happen, and don't forget to report in every half-hour." Nori pointed off down (and back up) a bitch of a hill that Minoru had already braved to get there, and Minoru's face fell.

"Fine." _He didn't even volunteer to watch the girls' cabin. He must be a eunuch. _He set off back down the hill, trudged up the hill, laid down, and opened his backpack. It took him a minute and a half to set up all of his gear: Weapon, stand, food, drink, and emergency tarp. He could have opened it up and dragged it, but what was the point? It wasn't like these kids were dangerous. Besides, then he'd have to order a new one from his storage facility in America, and that was plenty expensive.

He closed his left eye and looked with his right into his not-unimpressive (though certainly wimpy next to Nori's) scope and into the window of the girls' bedroom. They were all asleep, all eight of them, all fully clothed, no sexy pillow fights or erotic games of spin-the-bottle in sight. _Another eternal mystery solved, _he thought with a touch of misogynistic humor. _Damn. _

The door slid open, and an orange-haired girl walked in sleepily, rubbing her eyes, and left his field of view, what little he had from the window. _Ooh, _he thought half-heartedly._ Where was _she _coming from?_

_Probably the bathroom, you fuckwit letch. _

He sighed, another fantasy ruined by his own ability to reason, and grabbed a granola bar.

By the time Tate managed to soak his neck in the cool ocean water, he was thoroughly bored.


	5. 4: Shining days, burning bright

Author's Notes

Reviewer's corner

Thanks to Kuga, youneverknow (again), Meo, Duster, onenonly, and Crystal of Dark for your reviews! A few responses:

Crystal: Your reviews aren't stupid. They're very much appreciated, and more than that, they're very kind. As a person who often struggles with his own limitations, it's kind words like yours that make me happy to keep writing.

Sumerigawa: Thanks ;) I'm writing this fic with realism in mind more than fandom, which is simply a decision I made at the beginning. Because of this, I feel that it's pertinent to put more thought into most of the undeveloped relationships that were only hinted at in the series.

Astarae: Oi, thanks for catching those two issues; the inconsistency and the fact that I spelled Shizuru's name wrong for the entire first chapter. Both of the issues have been fixed. Thanks for the help; I appreciate it.

A little about the author (written in the Third Person because I can):

Veg is a first-year student at a big Midwestern University, in the state next to his home state. He's currently working on degrees in English and Computer Engineering, and is going to try and pursue a certificate in technical Japanese. He attributes this to his desire to make money, and an innate sense of masochism. He hopes to one day publish, settle down, and gloat long enough for him to realize that he didn't actually make much money off of it.

As always, thanks for reading!

1,000 hits! Whoo-ee! I'm hoping for a 15 stay-ratio at chapter 3 by the time I get this out.

* * *

Chapter 4

Shining days, burning bright

After burns had been drenched, breakfast consumed, and nightmares forgotten, the twelve of them settled down on the beach (on towels) to discuss what they should do for the first day of their spring break.

"I want to go swimming!" Mikoto announced, beginning the forum on a positive note. She stood up and tried to make for the ocean before anybody could agree or disagree, but Natsuki, moving with a speed born from years of paranoia, stuck her foot out into the younger girl's path, tripping her. Mikoto practically flew to the ground, but managed to catch herself before she got a faceful of sand. She tried again to make for water, only to find Natsuki's firm grip on her ankle preventing her from going anywhere but down.

"You've just eaten breakfast," Natsuki said levelly. "If you go swimming now, you'll drown and I won't save you."

Mikoto made a face and crawled back to her towel. Mai smiled at the girl. "Don't worry, Mikoto. We'll have plenty of time to go swimming after you've had time to digest your food. We could even go swimming before lunch."

"Good idea, Mai." Mikoto considered. "I want lunch."

"You just ate breakfast, stupid!" Shiho shouted from her position around Tate's arm. "How can you want lunch already?"

"Shiho!" Tate chided, feeling very much like a parent at that moment. He was certainly as embarrassed as one, as the group dissolved into complete silence, staring at the two of them.

"I'm just saying," Shiho said as though it was an excuse, unaware of the awkwardness rapidly enveloping the twelve of them.

"Well, don't just say."

In recent weeks, Shiho had started to drop her _cute-girl _routine around the twelve of them. Maybe it was because they were all aware of her real disposition and she knew that she wasn't fooling anyone anymore, or maybe she was just becoming more comfortable around them, but in any case, it was so sudden that the group hadn't really learned to cope with it yet when she snapped at them.

_Just like an embarrassed parent, _Mai told herself firmly, trying to pretend that the prospect didn't bother her.Still, she couldn't help staring at them with a little bit of jealousy. The rest of the group found other places to look—at each other, at the sea, at a small crab that suddenly looked delicious when Mikoto thought about the miso broth that she had just consumed. Some broke off into polite conversation to mask the bickering that was beginning to envelop Shiho and Tate, the bickering that had been more common lately.

Natsuki and Shizuru were seated next to each other, Shizuru talking quietly at Natsuki, who was barely looking at her, pretending she didn't desperately need sleep the way she did. Pretending, maybe, that she wasn't thinking with more than a little bit of…Natsuki might have been able to call it fear if nobody had ever tried to kill her before…not wholly pleasant anxiety about the dream that had rendered her completely sleepless. In any case, Shizuru didn't seem to mind. She had a small, completely benign grin on her face, and she was speaking animatedly, in a pleasant voice, which Natsuki could only half-focus on.

"…would be wonderful to go into the little town that we passed on the way here. I saw several arcades, and more than one little karaoke bar. I'm sure Mai would enjoy that very much; perhaps you might even have a good time, Natsuki."

Natsuki remained as she was, struggling to stay awake, to avoid embarrassing herself in front of everybody by collapsing; struggling to avoid dreaming again. She was starting to realize that the dream was fundamentally frightening her in ways she hadn't felt  
_wind blows and the captain of the kendo team_  
frightened in a long time.

Coming from anybody else, Shizuru's constant conversation with what may as well have been a brick wall might have seemed a little pathetic. In her case, however, she simply sounded as though she was speaking to a close friend on the phone. "Also, I noticed a couple of fancy lingerie shops there, and I'm sure that you _would love to shop in them with me, to undress in the booth with me, to not even bother seeing how well the lingerie fit you because we never bothered trying them on in the first place my Natsuki _would enjoy the chance to rebuild your collection."

Natsuki's attention did a little jump-to. "_What?_"

Shizuru looked a little surprised. "I'm sorry, did I embarrass you? I forgot that you were private about your collection." She lowered her head a little.

Natsuki was, but at the moment, that was the last thing that concerned her. "No, before that. What did you say before that? Or…" she struggled for a moment. "Or in between it." Her pulse jackhammered in her chest, and she realized that she was having some trouble breathing.

"In bet…what?" Shizuru looked confused. "Are you feeling alright, Natsuki?"

"Fine." Natsuki dropped her gaze, her pulse dropping back to a normal rate. _Did she actually say that? _She looked around. Mai was still staring at Tate, who was still arguing with Shiho; Aoi and Chie were talking in low tones about something or other; Reito was looking at Mai, very much like Mai was looking at Tate. Mikoto was chasing after a crayfish. Kazuya and Akane were cuddling, practically wiggling with glee. Midori looked a little annoyed, but only because she seemed to want to speak. None of them were staring at Shizuru with the kind of shocked looks she would have attracted by declaring her intent to strip Natsuki down in a dressing room and fuck her blind.

"So, would you like to go to town with me?"

Shiho had actually stood up, and she was shouting something about a "conniving woman" at Tate, though Natsuki had a feeling that she was using much harsher language than that. She had a hard time noticing, staring at the palms of her hands, face beet-red.

And suddenly, a voice stopped them all. Bright, perky, unfazed by imaginary declarations or very real name-calling, and most of all, fully confident in herself, Midori stood up, fist clenched, and said, "That's it! Lets all go to the town!"

They all stopped what they were doing and stared at her as though she had informed them that the grand Duke of Earl was actually residing in her sport coat back in the cabin and she had forgotten to let him out for water last night. Even Mikoto, who had finally captured the crayfish and was presently trying to find a way around its shell, stopped moving and looked, though she didn't lose her grip on the poor thing in her hand. Only Mai remained doing what she had been doing.

"That town kicks ass!" Midori continued. "I don't know if you guys noticed it, but it's great! It's got all sorts of shops, and restaurants, and…" she locked her gaze on Mai, who didn't notice, "the world's greatest…" a deep breath of anticipation arose. How could she have forgotten to let the duke out? "_ka-ra-OKE!_"

Mai didn't look up, and suddenly the group's attention was on her. _This is her _thing_, dammit, _Midori thought. _What's up with her? _

In reality, Midori knew damned well what was up with her. She just wasn't up to addressing it at the moment. She hadn't had a drink in what felt like a couple billion years. Not since the professor…

She shook her head, and Mikoto was next to Mai in an instant. "Mai? Are you okay?"

What happened next was a blur for everybody around Mai and Mikoto:

Mai's gaze lowers to the sand. A hint of a tear begins to work its way into her eye. She doesn't blink. She seems to have gone catatonic for a moment.

Mikoto's lips press against Mai's ear, and she whispers something.

Mai's eyes focus immediately, and she shakes her head, as though coming out of a daze. Maybe Tate catches on to what happened, and Chie, being the cleverest of the bunch with regards to the interactions between human beings, understands immediately, based on what she had been told about what transpired between Mikoto, Tate, and Mai only a few months before. And she had been told _everything_; not just about the drama that transpired, but about the cruel, bitter violence. About how close they had all come to dying.

Mai's eyes meet Mikoto's, and for a moment, they just stare at each other. In Mai's eyes are all the thanks the world has to offer, and in Mikoto's, a simple understanding. Then Mikoto grins and says, more to the rest of the group than to Mai, "Mai didn't sleep well last night, did you? You must have nodded off."

The rest have no idea how to take this, except as an explanation. Even if Mai hadn't fallen asleep, she may have fallen into a half-awake state. Yes, they silently agreed, this would explain her temporarily odd behavior. Better that than to force the _real _issue into light right now, when none of them were really prepared to deal with it, least of all Mai. It sounded a lot more selfish than it actually was; Chie especially was really equipped to deal with anything, anytime, but she understood that for now, Mai needed to remain how she was. That was how she got through life.

"Well, then, it's settled by a unanimous vote!" Midori grinned, shoving the energy back into the group's face without really asking. Or voting. "Everybody go get something respectable to wear, or at least something that looks neat coming off," she winked at Natsuki, of all people, who blushed a deep, deep red. (even Shizuru, who had seemed so confident in Natsuki's imagination a moment ago, looked away, a little flush in her cheeks.) "We are going to _town!_"

They all stood and began going towards the beach house, everyone but Mai and Mikoto. In spite of their vicious fight a moment ago, Shiho automatically latched onto Tate's arm, and the boy afforded Mai a glance that looked a lot like…

_pity?  
sympathy?  
something deeper?_

Tate looked away at Mai's glance, which more or less instructed him to do so. It was the ancient female communiqué: _We'll talk later. _

Then they vanished, and Mikoto put her arms around Mai, who sank into the younger girl for a minute.

"Are you okay?" Mikoto asked quietly.

"Yes. Thank you." Mai's voice was a little faint.

"Mai should sleep more."

"I know."

They sat there for a full minute like that, Mikoto holding Mai, Mai being held. Mikoto saying nothing, because she knew there was nothing to say. Because she knew that what had been consuming Mai towards the end had not been some petty angst over the boy that she would probably "officially" confess to in the next month.

Mai had been thinking about that, about _before. _About how close everyone that she loved had come to death. Permanent, final nothingness. Death left a stain on you once you had seen it, felt it, one that did not come off so easily as Mai had thought it would.

Mai Tokiha was a strong girl; very strong. But what she had gone through had left a piece of itself on her, and it didn't come off quite so easily as she would have liked.

Mai had been staring at Tate, and she had been watching him die again.

Mikoto knew this because she herself had killed him.

"Smiling Mai is the best Mai there is. Mai should smile," Mikoto said for the second time that day, "because they're all alive."

"I know," Mai whispered, and Mikoto braced for the final wave of pain, the hardest for Mai. This was not a new occurrence, and though it certainly wasn't common for Mai to break down like this, it had happened before, and it had always been around Mikoto. In some far-off part of her brain, the girl knew that her presence wasn't always welcome in Mai's mind, but this was a thought buried deep enough not to trouble her. "Sometimes, I just…I'm scared." _I think about that ever-present _what-if_; like after you narrowly miss running face-first into somebody. Only this one doesn't go away. _

_This one won't ever go away._

"It will, Mai," Mikoto whispered, and Mai, unaware that she had actually said that out loud, and not really aware of how Mikoto had responded, gave a single, lone sob. Mikoto squeezed her again, and, after a moment, Mai stood up. There were no tears on her face.

Mikoto looked up at Mai; looked up at the woman she loved so dearly that it sometimes pervaded all sense of being for her, and in a moment of clarity, Mai thanked somebody, anybody that Mikoto was still young enough not to associate that kind of love with being used so hurtfully as she had been.

"Lets go to town, Mai," Mikoto grinned. "You can get some things to cook."

"I think I'll do that," Mai said. She sounded better already. Things like this, Mikoto knew, came and went. She had her own spasms, though she would never tell Mai, not in a million years. It didn't usually matter anyway; they came at night, and she slept with Mai, and that was all the comfort she really needed.

* * *

Chie shook her head a little, gazing at the pair advancing towards the cabin for a moment as she exited the bathroom, more than a little relieved. Mai and Mikoto were walking quickly, grinning at each other, though Mai's grin was a little somber, and Mikoto's a little exaggerated. They held hands, fingers interlaced like old lovers. (Which, Chie knew for a fact, they were not.) _Those two...I know there's a connection between all of the other girls on this trip, even Shiho; it's the kind of connection old war buddies have. But these two have something even deeper than that. It's like Mikoto is Mai's daughter or something. _

Chie knew a lot of things: She knew why a dormitory had suddenly exploded in a massive fireball last semester; she knew why students began to go missing towards the end of that semester and why they reappeared _at _the end; she knew where Kazuya and Akane had been since the middle of that semester (and she knew where they were now, though she could have done without—she had seen them sneaking off to the back of the cabin while everybody else went to change); she knew why the moon had become, for a short time, a thing of exquisite ugliness, a massive orb hanging so near to the earth it seemed it would land on Tokyo, with what looked like pink mold growing off of it.

But her curiosity nagged at her about these two. She didn't know what they had that the rest of the ex-HiME didn't.

"Chie," Aoi's voice, more than a little hurried, came from the edge of her peripheral vision, "are you going in or out of the bathroom?"

"That all depends on where you're going, sweet thing," Chie said automatically, grinning a little impishly as Aoi danced in front of her, every part of the poor girl's being silently screaming at Chie to _MOVE I HAVE TO PEE!_

"In!"

Chie paused to consider, and then shrugged. "I guess it can't be helped if you don't want me watching you, then. I have to keep an eye on those deadly baby-feeders of yours, after all. If they were to get loose in the building, who knows what kind of hell they could raise?"

"Chie!" Aoi went a little redder than was necessary.

"Fine, fine." Chie moved, and if she looked closely, she was even able to see Aoi as she zipped past her and slammed the door shut. From her vantage point, Chie knocked on the door. "That miso you gulped getting to you, is it?"

There was no answer, but Aoi giggled a little. _Honestly, _Chie thought. _I'm so mean to that girl sometimes, and she puts up with it so gracefully. _

A little voice inside Chie told her that Aoi secretly loved it. It was the same voice that usually led her to interesting pieces of gossip back at Fuka Gakuen. She referred to that voice as _trouble. _

Mai and Mikoto walked up the stairs next to each other, shed their sandals, and walked past her into the bedroom where the girls were changing. On her way by, Chie caught a look from Mai that she couldn't interpret fully, but that flicked at her heart a little bit the way a third grader had once flicked at the back of her head: Painfully.

"Mai," Chie said, and the girl stopped. Mikoto did too, and Mai gave her a shrug. Mikoto continued into the bedroom.

"I'm sorry about before," Mai said, averting her eyes from Chie's.

"Screw that," Chie said quietly. "That thing that's been eating at you is what I'm concerned about."

Mai shrugged, and Chie pulled her aside as the door opened and Aoi exited, giving Chie a look that was both reproachful and a little amused. Chie shook her head, and Aoi nodded, kept walking.

"I'm serious," Chie said. "I don't know what I can do to force you to forget about what _didn't happen, _but—"

"But it did happen," Mai said. "The rest was just luck."

"And it can never happen again," Chie smiled, putting one cool hand on Mai's cheek and raising it so that their eyes met. "I don't know all the details of what happened to you guys, but I do know that it's over."

Mai didn't say anything, but it was clear she was biting her tongue. She was in a pretty bad way, Chie thought. "Listen. I know it's hard, but try and have a good time on this trip, okay? If you can't forget about it, try at least talking to Tate instead of staring at him like he's dead. I think that will serve as a healthy reminder that he's not."

_What do you know? _Mai thought bitterly. _You weren't there. You didn't see it. You didn't watch him—_

"_And if you keep staring at the ground like that, you might as well just lie down on it and die. I can help you do that if you want. Just pull the trigger and _I'll talk to you any time you need it, but I think there's somebody else you need to talk to, and soon. Stop pussyfooting around, if you know what I mean."

Mai looked up, eyes widening in alarm. "_What did you say?_"

Chie blinked. "What?"

"No," Mai shook her head. "It's nothing." _That can't have been real._

But the shock of it had snapped her out of her stupor. It had to; for a second there, she had seen a very real image of Chie doing exactly what she had said she would do. Her adrenaline alone had forced her out of that trance; that fight or flight instinct that had suddenly screamed at her to _run, run, _run _dammit! _She

_just pull the trigger and…_

shook her head. "Sorry. I'm better now."

Chie grinned. "You just stay that way. If you're not, just come talk to old Aunt Chie and I'll perk you right up. Maybe I can even impose on Midori for some of her better booze. A _real _girls night out, if you know what I mean."

Mai had a feeling that what she knew Chie meant was a great deal more perverted than what Chie had intended when she said it.

Mai grinned at her anyway, feeling the girl's sincerity press down on her heart in the best way. "So, when are we going to town?"

Chie looked at Mai in her swimsuit, which exposed a great deal more than a modest girl like Mai would normally want to show a stranger. She expected Mai had bought it with Tate in mind. "If you want to show half the town your tits, then right now; I certainly won't mind, and I'm sure they won't, eith—" But Mai had already gone beet-red, having previously forgotten about her current manner of dress, and bolted for the bedroom.

Chie grinned at the retreating girl's back for a moment, and then went out in search of Aoi, and maybe a few incriminating photographs of Kazuya and Akane to pester them with.

* * *

Maybe if Minoru hadn't been lying in a pile of grass on his stomach, watching the show through the scope of a sniper rifle, he would have enjoyed the sight of eight or nine high-school girls changing. As it was, the cramp in his back was already pretty bad and he was more pissed-off than anything. 

All they were doing was changing; it seemed like the orange-haired one with the big breasts was angsting over some guy or another (he rolled his eyes, having been and gone from his angsty lone-sniper days), and the girl who was so shitheeled over the skinny guy was in back making out with him. Was this really what he was getting paid to do? And why wasn't his target doing anything interesting, like shouting inspirational, if radical, speeches at a bunch of bright-eyed soldiers, or killing fifty men with five shots, or something that was actually worth his fucking _time? _

Okay, so he got cabin fever sometimes. It didn't make him a bad sniper.

Something else about the whole thing was making him antsy. That was the problem. A palpable sense of _wrong-ness _about the whole thing. He was sure that at least one of the girls—the one with the long, purple hair who always seemed to have another one fawning over her (_kids these days_, an old homophobe thought)—had caught onto it too. He was also almost certain it had something to do with what he was doing, which meant trouble.

A few minutes later, they all began to pile into the van, and it occurred to Minoru that this facilitated a new part of his assignment. He picked up the two-way radio that connected him to scratch-ass, and after a moment's hesitation, clicked the button. "Boss, they're leaving."

"I know."

_You _know? _Then what the fuck am I here for? _Minoru was suddenly angry.

"Orders?"

"Follow them, of course. They'll be heading into the town."

_Follow…what? _"On foot?"

"Of course on foot. Make sure nobody sees your rifle. Your partner will remain here and observe the premises. The town is less than a quarter-mile away from your current position, and it is small enough that they should stand out."

Minoru sighed with the button depressed so that the bastard couldn't hear him, but he got the strangest feeling he could anyway.

He pressed the button again. "Roger that. Moving on foot."

The prospect of trekking _any _length again in this heat didn't appeal to him at all. The fact that he would look like a complete jackass in his hiking attire didn't sweeten the deal, either.

"You hear that, good buddy?" he said into his other radio, the one linking him to his partner. "I'll be leaving you here by yourself for a while."

"Roger that." Flat, uncaring.

"Make sure you don't die of boredom or anything. I wouldn't want that creepy bastard after me."

"Roger that." Flat, uncaring.

_God, how boring. _

* * *

The man with the scratchy voice put the radio down, satisfied for the moment. _No matter how much he gripes, he won't lose them. And the longer he follows my orders, the longer the paper trail gets, and the closer I come to cutting it off. _

He supposed this was what real criminals felt like when they found what they considered to be the perfect crime.

But then again, he wasn't even close to being a criminal. Not in his mind, anyway.

* * *

A/N: (edit) Looks like I won't be able to finish this chapter tonight; the call of the homework I have to do is just too great. Sorry, all. I'll do my best to get it up tomorrow! 

Sorry for the wait, and thanks for reading!


	6. 5: Sons of Plunder

No author's notes this time, sorry all! Gotta keep on working!

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to drop me a review if you like it, or even if you don't.

* * *

Chapter 5

Sons of Plunder / My letter #2

Mai's recovery was accepted by the group without discussion, as a quarrel between lovers might have been accepted once it was resolved. None of them wanted to reopen the wound again.

Midori eased the van into one of the many open parking spots on Goza's main drag, a street about a mile long, filled with bars, deliberately quaint clothing stores, a grocery store, a movie theater, and enough little restaurants to make your stomach bulge out of your pants just looking at them. She was a lot better at parking than Reito, who didn't seem to mind this.

As the twelve of them finished piling out and Midori locked the car up, it occurred to all of them, more or less simultaneously, that none of them had any sort of idea what they were going to do. They had all come with different ideas in mind, and now that they were here, in a group, they all realized that arguing over it would make them much like a starfish whose legs all wanted to move in different directions.

Thus, they all remained quiet for about a minute, all wanting to speak, all wanting different things:

Aoi, who was generally passive, really wanted to go looking for a new swimsuit, mostly because she had unintentionally peed in her old one a little while Chie teased her, and she didn't really want to wash it out for fear of being questioned about it. Also, she generally just enjoyed shopping as a pastime. Her secret dirty habit. She was, however, willing to go with just about anything that Chie proposed.

As it happened, Chie wouldn't have minded helping Aoi pick out a new swimsuit. She also wouldn't have minded letting Tate help_ her _pick out a new swimsuit, although she'd never say anything of the sort. He was cute, but he was Mai's. _But a girl can daydream, can't she? _But she respected his and Mai's unspoken relationship all the same. The girl had enough trouble as it was, she thought. No reason to make more for her.

Shiho wouldn't have minded letting Tate pick her out a swimsuit either, but she wasn't thinking about that; she was actually thinking of the massive pit in her stomach. She hadn't really gotten much food.

Midori, of course, wanted to sample several bars' goods before the night came and she was forced to choose between them. She had her fake I.D. with her, and god damnit, she was _thirsty. _

Akane and Kazuya were the only two people who generally agreed on what they wanted to do, which was find a place to be alone, _away _from that damned camera-phone of Chie's. (She had gotten the picture she had been after, though she promised not to do anything evil with it, provided they got their asses in gear and piled into the car. She had ways of getting what she wanted.)

Natsuki, as embarrassing as it was, actually _did _want to find some local color to add to her collection. She couldn't help feeling that she'd forgotten something back at the cabin, though.

Shizuru knew what Natsuki wanted, and to help her out with that. Failing that, she wouldn't have minded a movie.

What Tate _really _wanted was some time to talk with Mai, but the added weight on his arm, along with Reito's subtle grin at him, basically signaling to the younger boy that _I do indeed remember our agreement, and you damned well better, as well, _told him that this was not happening anytime soon.

Mikoto wanted to go to a grocery store with Mai. She also wanted Mai to cook whatever she bought in this grocery store, _in _the grocery store. It didn't sound strange to her.

Mai, however, already had her eyes locked onto the Karaoke joint they had parked not fifty yards from. It was fairly clear that those eyes weren't letting go until somebody promised her that she was going to be singing that night.

Reito wanted to follow somebody else around, for once. Aside from that, he had no preference; in reality, he had a very private distaste for the town, and small towns in general.

Midori could almost sense the explosion coming, and knew she had to act fast to avert disaster. She watched Mikoto licking her lips, preparing to speak as soon as somebody else did; saw Chie's eyes flicking around, prepared for a verbal battle the likes of which this small town had never seen.

_You have to talk fast, or there will be a ruckus. _In a moment of wild fantasy, Midori envisioned the "ruckus" spiraling out of control, to a point where the chaos was absolute, destruction imminent, and where only her good looks and talent stood between the town and annihilation at the hands of a bunch of _you're just as young as they are._

Another fantasy ruined at the hands of her young age and old wisdom. Wisdom she had gotten from…

"We should all split up," Natsuki said firmly. "I have a few things I want to check out on my own." Midori's face sank, and she cursed her  
_immaturity_  
lack of speed.

"Alright," she said, taking charge. "We can meet back here in…" she checked her watch. "Four hours."

_Drinking before 5, Midori? _A little voice in her head chastised. She called it "sensibility." _Tsk tsk. _Somebody said something, and people began to move, but she was no longer paying attention.

_I'm not drinking. I'm _sampling. She rebutted.

_"Sampling" until you inebriate yourself. How many nights have you actually been _sober _since—_

_don't think about that…don't think about that…don't think about that…_

_Why? Afraid to admit that maybe all of that _most precious one _shit was about as valuable as what you vomit up when you're drunk?_

_…don't think about that. NOT THINKING ABOUT THAT. HAVING A GOOD TIME ON VACATION NOT THINKING ABOUT THAT._

"Midori," said a formal voice; it wasn't unpleasant at all, but it was nonetheless just about the _last _thing she wanted: Male interference. She looked up and saw Reito standing in front of her inoffensively. "I don't have anywhere in particular to go, so I wonder if you might want some company."

"I don't think you'd enjoy the places I'm going," Midori said, a little too coldly.

"I might surprise you," Reito smiled. He really did have a lovely smile. She couldn't tell whether or not he was being disingenuous, but his smile really was…

She felt like she had to throw up. If she continued this conversation, she probably would have to throw up. Of course, if she did what she was planning to do, she would throw up many times, but that was different. (She'd have liked to be able to say that she held her liquor well, but she didn't; she was a small Japanese woman who couldn't have weighed more than 135 after a big meal, and most of what she _did _weigh was from muscle, not fat).

"Sorry," she shrugged. "I'm not…" she let it hang.

He frowned. "You're not what?"

She frowned back after a moment. _What _had _I meant to say? That I'm not "that kind of woman"? What kind of woman is that, exactly?_

"You know what? I honestly have no idea."

He gave her a strange look, and she wondered how much about her own situation _he _knew.

"Then I'll come with you."

She shook her head again. "Nuh-uh. You're too nice a boy for that kind of business."

He gave her a stranger look, and she cursed at herself. "Not _that _kind of business, you pervert!" She realized she'd said this a bit too loud, and looked around quickly, only to find that everybody else had dispersed. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it." His smile was a little warmer now. A little more lady-killing. "You're going bar-hopping, right?"

She sputtered a little. She had only ever called it that to Youko, who would only nod and demand that she quit dragging her ass. To the few others

o_ne other_

she had ever had to explain it to, she called it "creative sightseeing" or, if absolutely necessary, "going out for a sip."

"Yeah," she muttered.

"It's been a while, but I think I can still do the dance."

She blinked once, twice, three times a lady and she still didn't believe it. "You."

"Me."

"Are you sure somebody didn't just drop your unconscious body into a puddle of beer once?"

"Positive."

"You," she repeated, completely unable to reconcile the stand-up, straight-backed Reito standing in front of her with her image of the standard male barfly that she encountered: Stained shirt, unfocused eyes, large (or small) erection that he tried desperately to conceal while he talked to her in a vain attempt to get the opportunity to use it.

"Is it really that hard to believe?"

The polite thing to say would have been, _well, it's a little out-of-character for you, _which was probably why her vehement reply was something like, "_Yes!_"

"I _do _go to a university now; in fact, I go to the same one that you do," he offered in a brotherly, _you know how it goes_ tone. He seemed genuinely confused by her reaction, but that, she knew, could have been as much of an act as half of the other faces he put forth to the world.

"And?"

He shook his head. "You don't get around there much, do you?"

He struck a nerve without meaning to, and she clamped her teeth down on her tongue to stop herself from screaming something to the effect of, _What the fuck do you mean by _that, _you snide piece of blue-blooded _shit Instead, she just glared, and he backed down a little.

There was silence for a moment as the tension in the air built to a climax. Midori wanted him gone. She wanted him gone right now. She wanted to be by herself for a while and build up a nice healthy buzz so that she could deal with him again, because she would have to deal with him eventually. They were living in the same cabin.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, meeting her glare with a soft gaze of his own. "I didn't mean that like it sounded."

"How _did_ you mean it, exactly?"

He frowned. "There's no way to say it right now without digging myself into a deeper pit than I'm already in."

"It's pretty hard to dig yourself any deeper than where you are right now," she countered. "Try me."

"I just meant that I never see you around the campus is all. We go to the same university, and I know you're working pretty hard on your thesis, but—"

"I'm not working on my thesis anymore," she said quietly. "There's no reason to."

"Why? Just because the HiME star is gone, that means there's no reason to make a comprehensive chronicle of its existence?"

_You don't get it, you snide fuck, and I don't think you ever will. _"Leave me alone, Reito," she said evenly. "I don't want any of what you're offering."

"I'm not sure I understand, but I'll do as you ask," he smiled, his voice strangely devoid of any sense of defeat. At that, he turned, almost on his heel, and walked off without another word, his gait neither cheery nor dejected.

Reito stuck one hand in his pocket and shook his head, genuinely concerned about Midori. In spite of being a closet letch, an excellent actor, and a big fat phony sometimes, he was still a decent human being, and he felt a hefty dose of decent human concern at this point for the girl, who had reacted so intensely when the subject of the university and her thesis had been brought up.

_And there she goes into a bar she's never been in before at one in the afternoon, when only the really shitty drunks are in, to work herself into a nice slobbery stupor in a town that fills up with thousands of tourists sometime near dark. _There was nothing more dangerous than getting drunk by yourself in a place where nobody knew you and you returned the favor, except maybe for getting drunk in a place where nobody knew anybody else at all, and she was about to combine the two.

This certainly wasn't the first underhanded act Reito Kanzaki had ever engaged in, and it probably wouldn't be the last, either. In what appeared to be selection by an impartial judge, Midori started off towards a bar chosen at random, (there were several on the street), and as soon as she entered it, Reito started moving.

* * *

Minoru reached the town shortly after noon—scratch-ass had been right, the walk wasn't terribly long; no more than a half an hour—but his back ached like _hell. _It had occurred to him more than once to question why exactly he was being made to carry his rifle along with him if he wasn't going to be using it at all; indeed, it seemed increasingly that this would be his first assignment in at least a decade where he didn't have to fire so much as a single shot, and while he rather liked the prospect, he had to accept that he wasn't twenty anymore, and he really couldn't hike this far with fifty-odd pounds on his back like he could fifteen years ago. 

_Why _do _I put up with this assignment? It's certainly not for the money—it's not like I need any more of that in my lifetime. _Indeed, this was truer than it would be for most people in the world: The Sino-Russian conflict alone had earned him more money in two years than most people made in a lifetime. He had embraced several years ago the fact that the only reason he still whored his gun out was because he had nothing else to do, and it made him feel like maybe he wasn't getting older after all.

_Some people would call that sick, but some people don't understand the way this profession works. If I didn't get hired to do a job, somebody else would. There's plenty of us out there, and I've got more discretion than most of them anyway. _He said this to himself frequently. Moreso lately.

Maybe the reason he didn't just break contract and run was because he wanted the relief, yes. Or maybe it was something else.

_Maybe you just don't want to admit that scratch-ass scares the piss out of you. _

Which was absurd, since he'd only ever heard his voice over the phone.

_If either of you dies, we'll shoot the other._

Maybe it was the creepy ambiguity of the whole thing; but then again, he usually didn't meet his employers face to face. _But most of my employers don't talk like a middle-aged version of deep-throat, either. _

He shook his head, forcing himself back to the present before he wandered into the street by accident and got himself run over in quite possibly the most embarrassing way he could imagine, on the worst day he'd had in quite some time. He wanted to go out on a good day, anyway.

He found his way onto the main drag of this little tourist trap of a town; not hard to do since the rest of it only encompassed a few square blocks in the direction he'd come from. He looked up, and almost by accident, he discovered that maybe it wasn't such a bad day after all.

His mark was twenty yards in front of him, and she was walking right into a store that appeared to specialize in lingerie.

* * *

The figure could have just as easily been a shadow, but that concerned none of the living. 

What concerned the figure was the man with the sniper rifle aimed at the cabin. He was patient, but so was the figure, who could wait as long as was necessary to ascertain every detail of the situation.

Or at least, as long it took to convince the figure that the man needed to die. The figure's knives were always sharp.

* * *

There were two facts of life that Shizuru Fujino seemed to be able to ignore with a perfect fluidity: The first was that Natsuki was, as of late, only halfway comfortable with Shizuru's company. The second was that she was walking right into a lingerie shop with that only halfway-comfortable girl. 

Nonetheless, Natsuki, ever the "stuff it in" type, pushed her discomfort aside. A display of her discomfort, she knew, would only make the situation worse.

Natsuki didn't suppose that Shizuru would appreciate being referred to as a situation.

The store was more or less the same as the rest of the town—quaint and yet inviting enough to make one want to spend (a lot of) money there—with one major difference: Unlike the rest of the town, the store sold lingerie. As Natsuki was rapidly discovering, quaint lingerie stores were really just log cabins with enough of a repressed sexual undertone to make it feel, to her, like stepping onto the set of a pornographic movie. Once again, she pushed the feeling aside with a measure of success and began browsing as she always did, acting as though she was not browsing by moving brusquely through the aisles like she was looking for something in particular. (Though she felt she had lightened up considerably since the destruction of the HiME star, Mai often insisted that she still needed to stop being so serious all the time).

This worked quite well for her as she quickly looked through the racks full of panties and bras, aptly ignoring another undeniable fact of life: That any store specializing in lingerie was bound to be concerned primarily with the raunchier side of the garment. She would select four items and leave, as simple as that. She rarely indulged in the vaguely sexual glee that naturally accompanied lingerie shopping, and never when others were around to see the color in her cheeks as she did so.

She was able to focus on this right up until Shizuru, who had wandered off for a moment, appeared next to her, holding up what was quite possibly the raunchiest set of panties she had ever seen: They were a deep, suggestive red, made entirely from lace so that they were just barely transparent; the waist was small, the butt nonexistent. Oh, and they were crotchless.

Shizuru had the most adorable grin on as she held them up for Natsuki to observe.

"What do you think, Natsuki?" Shizuru asked as though she couldn't see the deep blush invading Natsuki's face.

Natsuki could only stare. Up until last year, her collection had consisted entirely of plain white granny-panties and bras. Following the attack of a particularly perverse Orphan, however, the entire collection was destroyed and she was encouraged (by a certain brown-haired "friend," no less) to branch out a little as she rebuilt, to indulge her "creativity" as she hadn't done in the past.

For Natsuki, however, creativity stopped at the color blue and a single thong. She didn't even think something like this existed. She could only gape and blush a crimson as deep as that…

She shook her head. Something very deep inside of her wanted that little thing very, very badly. The rest of her wanted it gone before she had a meltdown. A _big _meltdown.

In the midst of her shock, and maybe with a little help from the soft power that Shizuru possessed, but rarely employed, Natsuki found herself unable to resist as Shizuru guided her towards the dressing room. She found her legs and Fujino's moving in complete synchronization, and she was utterly oblivious to the odd looks the shopkeepers were giving her.

She snapped out of this half-trance about five feet before what she was suddenly certain was her imminent demise within the confines of a dressing room. She didn't know what had put her there in the first place, but she was convinced that she needed to leave _right. now. _before Shizuru did something like suggest that she

"Go on, try it on."

Natsuki froze.

_Her mouth wrapped around Natsuki's breast, Shizuru whispers, "Go on, try it on," _

"Don't worry," Shizuru gave her a soft grin. "I'll be out here."

"I-don't-th-th-think," Natsuki was _stuttering. _Fear gripped her chest for the second time this trip, and it seemed to affect her more than being shot at; when she was being shot at, at least she knew what to do. What Shizuru was suggesting…

"Why not?" Shizuru asked like she wasn't suggesting anything.

"This isn't really my…my kind of thing."

"Are you talking about this," Shizuru nodded at the panties, "or…" She let it hang.

There was silence between them for a moment, and suddenly Natsuki realized that they were in a place where nobody could see them, a corner blocked from view by a wall. How had she let herself get here in the first place? She never locked up like that.

The bell attached to the front door rang, and the shopkeeper's voice rang out, "Hello, wel—um," a shocked pause; it took the old lady a moment to recover. "Welcome to our shop, sir."

_Sir? _Both of them froze.

"Don't worry about me, ma'am. I'm just here to pick up a replacement for something of my girlfriend's," 'sir' said. His voice was calm, with a touch of dry humor to it, and smooth as a field of grass blowing in the wind. "She's having her mother over, you see, and she spilled miso all down her front."

"And she had no other replacements with her?"

"We're staying over at the lodge by the beach, and she had nothing left. I won't be but a minute."

The old lady's voice was still suspicious, but she seemed a little more accommodating. "Alright, but don't go near those changing rooms. There are a pair of young ladies back there right now." He made a noise of agreement. "Also, you'll have to leave your backpack at the counter."

"Alright, but I'd prefer you didn't open it. It's rather private."

The shopkeeper's voice was sharp. "I wasn't going to open it."

"Sorry, sorry. Just a habit."

There was a heavy metallic _thud,_ and the old woman said, "Oi, what do you have in there?"

"Like I said," the man said wryly, "private."

"All right, all right, go find whatever you're looking for."

"Yessum," the man laughed a little, and, surprisingly, the woman laughed with him.

Natsuki relaxed a little, found Shizuru to be gazing into her eyes. She jumped a little.

"Natsuki," Shizuru asked quietly. "Are you afraid of me?"

The question took her more off-guard than the gaze, and suddenly, she couldn't think of an answer to such a simple question. Words like "yes" and "no" seemed insufficient for some reason.

"I wouldn't want to cause you any discomfort, Natsuki," Shizuru continued. "But…I don't want you to be…"

"Shizuru," Natsuki said a bit awkwardly, "You're not—"

"I know I make you a little bit uncomfortable. I know I have since I did those things…those crazy things, without even thinking about it, really. I had hoped you could move past them, but if you're not ready to, then you should tell me."

Natsuki didn't know what to say to this, but Shizuru didn't seem to be ready for a response anyway. "Because I don't want to hurt you any more than I already have. But at the same time, I don't want to keep being hurt by you.

"Because I never get anything from you. Never a yes, never a no. Never even a maybe. And I don't know what to do about that, Natsuki. I really don't." She spoke calmly, without so much as a tremble in her voice. At the same time, though, Natsuki could hear the girl's sincerity in the simplicity of her tone. "And that causes me some discomfort, too."

This hit Natsuki harder than she'd thought it would; she felt like she'd been slapped by this calm, neutral voice coming from this pretty, cool-headed girl.

_She inhales. I inhale. She exhales. I exhale._

The silence was thick. Natsuki felt suddenly as though she was going to choke on it.

"You know why that is?"

_She inhales. I inhale._

_She exhales. _

"I love you, Natsuki."

_I exhale._

_She's leaning in towards me.  
I can't do this.  
Her breath tickles my cheek.  
I can't do this._

_  
Her lips are_

warm  
soft

_moist. _

_I can't. _Natsuki turned her head away, and Shizuru let out a breath that could have been as much frustration as it was disappointment.

"I wish you would tell me to leave," Shizuru murmured, "if that was what you wanted."  
_I don't._  
Natsuki shook her head. "I'm sorry, Shizuru. I'm not ready for something like that. Not yet. Not now."

"Is there somebody else?"

In a moment of bitterness, Natsuki said, "Who else would there be, Shizuru? There isn't anybody."

"Then you haven't forgotten about that yet."

"No, I haven't. I can be around you and be all right, but I can't…I can't trust you. Not really."

Shizuru sighed. "I'm sorry, then. I'm sorry for that."  
_Don't be._  
She turned and started to walk away. "I'll wait outside for you."

_She's walking away. She's leaving. _Fear greater even than before gripped Natsuki's chest like a vise. "Don't—" but it was too late. She was gone.

She was gone and Natsuki was still there.

Natsuki sighed, her head clearing as it always did after the  
_Shizuru's  
_pressure was off, and after a moment's consideration, she tried the panties on.

* * *

A/N: 

Oi. Sorry if that sucked. Writer's block's a bitch. Tell me what you thought, if you can.


	7. 6: Guarded

Author's Notes

Reviewer's corner

Thanks to Astarael00, Sei-so, xsojix, saron, Ultra-marine, Me, and Feyrbrand1 for their reviews! Ooh-rah.

Ultra-marine: Thanks I was only half-kidding; I feel like my last chapter, while important to the plot, wasn't written as clearly as my others. I'm really, really glad you liked it though. Thanks. I mean it.

Sei-so: Trust me, _anybody _waking up in an unfamilliar mountain of cleavage is likely to experience a little bit of initial fear. (Although I have to say, usually it's something more along the lines of _oh god, who is this and what did they give me?_)

Feyr: Not even I know where this story is going to end up yet. Stick around; I think you'll like it. You might even find that you like a few of the characters by the end—I think that humans as a group are pretty base, but if you dig deep enough, they have a lot of redeeming qualities, and I try my best to write these characters in that way.

Worry not, all ye doubters, this story will not be an endless soap opera.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognize except Minoru. The preface isn't mine either, sorry.

* * *

_Now I want you when you're gone / and now it's like you're / holding something just in front of me_

* * *

Chapter 6

Guarded

"Jee-zus," Tate muttered as he looked at the menu posted outside of _Ichi's Beachside Restaurant and Inn, _which proudly boasted the _cheapest, tastiest sukiyaki in Goza! _As it happened, the _cheapest, tastiest sukiyaki in Goza! _would cost him no less than seventeen hundred and fifty yen. "_This _is cheap?"

"What's wrong, Big Brother?" Shiho asked from Tate's arm, innocently ignorant of the toll that her demand of "I want sukiyaki!" would exact on her "Big Brother"; on his bank balance, and quite possibly on his sanity. Tate Yuuichi was from Tokyo, after all, where if you didn't like the cost of the _cheapest sukiyaki in _the city, you went around the corner to a McDonalds and got an American-style hamburger. "I'm hungry."

"I know you are, Shiho," Tate frowned. "But this is really expensive."

"The sign says it's cheap."

"The sign is lying. Look here," he pointed to the "beef sukiyaki" entry on the menu. "That's plenty cheap if you own Mie prefecture, I guess."

Shiho frowned. "It's too much for you?"

Tate looked away, a little embarrassed. "I don't think I have that kind of money to throw around, Shiho. I'm really sorry."

He supposed that his surprise at her reaction was a sign of their slowly-but-surely degenerating relationship. She smiled and nodded. "That's alright. I don't mind not eating here if it's too expensive. Do you think we could go get something from the grocery store, though? I'm very hungry." Her ultra-polite tone surprised him as much as anything, and he felt something sink in his stomach at her formality.

_In spite of everything, _he supposed, _I still love this girl like my sister. _

"No problem," he forced a grin, and suddenly found it hard to relax around a girl he'd been friends with for more than half a decade. Hard to be himself  
_around the girl that killed you_  
around somebody who he'd very nearly fallen in love with once. He supposed that last one was the most normal of them all; he was privately amazed that the two of them were able to interact at all after that…what had they called it? That _carnival. _He supposed the only reason that they could was a dedicated effort on the part of Shiho, and something not quite like habit, but not entirely like affection, either, that came from him.

Or maybe it was the way she still beamed when she grasped onto his arm and found he could only muster a half-grin. Maybe that was it, he thought as he made his way into the grocery store that was curiously next door to the _cheapest sukiyaki in Goza._

* * *

Mai found that walking around with Mikoto was like drinking hot tea when you were sick: It probably didn't actually make your cold go away, but you felt a hell of a lot better anyway; you felt your throat clear and your muscles relax, and maybe you even drifted off into a welcome, blissful sleep. 

They didn't actually talk a lot; Mikoto wasn't exactly a dazzling conversationalist, and while Mai had the ability to make nice with just about anybody, almost on command,

_good girl has to smile pretty for the camera_

she found that she had little to say to the perpetually happy girl next to her, but it was a "little to say" that existed because there was no need for it, not because there was no interest in it.

Or maybe it was _because _this girl was perpetually happy that she had no need to converse with her all the time. Maybe she didn't have to work to make Mikoto happy, and maybe that was one of the reasons she felt so strongly attached to her. She had thought at first that this was incredibly selfish, until she had spoken with Chie about it.

_Most relationships between people are selfish; if they weren't, their give and take wouldn't be so important, _she had said. _When people find somebody that makes them happy, they want to have those people near them so that they can be happy. It sounds awful, but it's not; it's actually one of the sweetest things I've ever seen, because in the midst of all that selfishness, you see these people doing wonderful things for each other; and their only reward, the only thing they really want out of it, is for that person to keep being alive and happy. Their supposed selfishness actually results in what's probably the purest form of altruism in the world, and that's what I see between you and Mikoto. _

Chie was also a closet cynic, but Mai had found something true in those words, and it had eased her mind at once when she heard them. _When somebody makes you happy and you make them happy and you don't hurt each other, you've got something. _

"Mai?" Mikoto was tugging at her arm, and Mai emerged from her head quickly.

"Mmm?"

"Why is the grocery store right next to the restaurant?"

Mai thought it was a silly question, at first; something that a three-year old might ask, something that could only be answered with something like, _because it is, _until she noticed the man in the white cook's apron sneaking into a side entrance on the restaurant with grocery bags full of what looked like shirataki noodles. She grinned to herself privately, and looked down at Mikoto, who always had been and always would be sharper than she let on. "I believe that would be called 'emergency restock,' Mikoto." She grinned a little, noticing that while the restaurant advertised the _cheapest sukiyaki in Goza, _its prices were in fact relatively exorbitant. She wondered briefly how the customers would feel to know that they were being extorted for what was essentially boxed shirataki noodles on a fancy plate.

_Provided that the plate even _is _fancy, _she mused. _For all I know, they cover the plates in sawdust before they serve it for that great mesquite taste that you just can't get enough of. _

She said this last part in English in her head, remembering an advertisement she'd seen once, and laughed at several years later when somebody told her that it essentially meant that the commercial wanted people to pay to make their food taste like burning wood.

"Well, shall we go in, or are we going to wait for the food to come to us out here?" Mai grinned.

"We could ambush the emergency restock," Mikoto smiled back as the short, old man dashed into the grocery store a second time. "Then we wouldn't even have to pay for the food."

Mai chuckled. "And just how would we do that, exactly?"

Mikoto stared at Mai's weapon—her pair of weapons, rather—making it very clear just how they would do that, exactly. Mai blushed abruptly and shook her head. "Get out of here, you little—" she started, and then noticed just how intently the younger girl was staring at her pair of weapons. She took off like a shot into the grocery store as Mikoto began giggling, and the little shit tore after her.

They tore straight into the store, unthinking of what the owners would think—probably they were their only business right now, aside from the restaurant, anyway, so Mikoto didn't think it mattered; but as her consciousness became enraptured in the thrill of the chase, her nostrils flaring with the scent of her pray, her ears gradually tuning in only to the sound of Mai's footsteps, she cared less and less. Her stomach growled, and a predatory grin enveloped her face, until finally, they reached a corner; Mai turned, slowing as she did, around a neat little noodle display, and Mikoto pounced—

* * *

Shiho picked up a ripe-looking imported persimmon, sniffed the bottom, found it to be as fragrant as she could hope for in the off-season. She showed it to Tate, who smiled, nodded, and then said, "Go pick out something with meat or noodles in it, Shiho; I don't want you starving to death." _Okay, _mom. 

Shiho nodded, and the two of them started walking towards the first aisle, where they had seen what appeared to be a microwave noodle display. (Shiho had seen the persimmons and gotten distracted).

In the last moment of the display's existence, Tate thought, _Wow. That's really quite a neat display considering it's just packages of microwave noodles. _

In the last moments of the display's existence, Shiho, ever-observant, thought, _what is that, exactly? It's moving really fast._

It took four seconds for the noodle display to die:

1: We can observe Mai rounding the corner, seeing Tate with some vague immediate sense of recognition mostly blurred out by the adrenaline pumping in her brain. Similarly, we can observe Mikoto, noticing the noodle display, mostly by way of her stomach. Shiho is just now having her thought concerning the incredible speed of the two projectiles hurtling themselves at her.

2: Mikoto's feet seem to lift themselves from the ground as she pounces. Mai notices the collision imminent on her present course, looks back, and notices the other collision imminent. In some far-off corner of her brain, she thinks, _hey, at least that display will block her. _Shiho's eyes widen in alarm, and Tate reciprocates Mai's recognition, notices the black monster rising steadily towards the noodle display, eyes wide and blazing, mouth open and predatory.

3: Shiho, unable to dive out of the way in time, drops to the ground, covering her head in panic, and Mai, similarly unable to stop herself in time, trips over her. Tate's eyes widen in alarm as he sees the _third _imminent collision coming, realizes that there are about fifty imported persimmons blocking his escape route. If he knocked those expensive bastards over, he understands, his fate would be worse than the death rapidly approaching him. Meanwhile, Mikoto's realizes, all too late, that her calculated path was just barely too low to carry her _over _the display, though it will certainly allow her to capture her prey. This, in her mind, is justification enough for the civilian casualties she is sure to cause. Some losses, after all, are unavoidable in the pursuit of justice and food.

4: The twisted play that has set itself up so well comes crashing down around them; Mai lands straight on Tate, who bravely dives on the proverbial grenade, allowing himself to be carried down with a _crash _to save the expensive imported persimmons. Shiho, still crouching and covering her head, now requiring only a desk to do this under to be safe during a nuclear attack, serves as kind of a springboard as Mikoto crashes straight through the display, which collapses to the ground like a sandcastle annihilated by a drunken bully on his way to throw up in a small child's hair. The ravenous girl lands on top of Shiho's head, painfully (for her), and bounces off of it, prepared for the _coup de grace, _which she ably delivers, diving straight onto Mai's back to be carried to the ground with the rest of them.

At least the persimmons were saved, but at cost of the brave Private Tate Yuuichi. War ain't fair.

* * *

'Sir' was gone but his backpack was still at the counter. Shizuru was also gone. As Natsuki realized this, her paranoia began to spark off alerts in her brain. Before she acted rashly, however, she asked the old lady at the counter where he had gone. She said he had left shortly after "your lovely friend," stating that he'd left something in his car, but that he would be back. He had even left his heavy old backpack. Which, the lady added in a _just-between-us-girls _tone that Natsuki had never been able to relate to, even when the person speaking WAS _us girls, _she had secretly peeked into the pack, just a little, and seen a bunch of metal tools, tools whose purpose and usage she didn't have the slightest inkling of. 

All those little paranoid buzzings in Natsuki's brain turned into full-blown alarms as she verily tore out the door, tossing her near-purchase on the counter; about a billion of those little alarms, and not just the standard _stalker alert prepare nut-kick _alarms, either. Shizuru didn't know it, but she had a lot of enemies; she had destroyed the entire First District headquarters, in less than a day, almost as a side-note. Even if the destruction _had _been complete, which wasn't guaranteed in any way, First District had a lot of people who didn't work in the building, and a lot of people who believed pretty devoutly in their work. Any one of them could be—

_that thing you forgot  
you forgot your gun_

—chatting pleasantly with Shizuru, who was leaning against the wall to the building as calmly as she did anything. Natsuki burst out the door, but before she could shout so much as a warning, the man she was chatting with, a moderately handsome fortysomething dressed in rather dorky-looking woodland camouflage, grinned at her.

"Is this the friend you were talking about?"

Shizuru nodded. "Natsuki Kuga, meet Minoru Alder," she said, indicating each as she introduced them.

"Nice to meet you," Minorou said, bowing a little informally. Natsuki bowed back awkwardly. "Your friend here was just telling me that you're staying over at the beachside resort."

Natsuki nodded, a little shaken, a little confused.

"That's great! My wife and I are staying there too; I'd ask you to come visit us tonight, but she's having her mother over for dinner tonight, and to be honest, the woman is a grumpy old coot." She couldn't put her finger on it yet, but something about this set off her paranoia alarms again. He fiddled with his wedding band absently, and then put his hand to his forehead in sudden realization. "Oh, crap. I left my backpack in there, and I have to get back before my wife kills me."

Shizuru smiled gracefully. "It was good to meet you, Mr. Alder."

"Minoru is fine," the man grinned back. "Say, if you'd like, she'd love to have the two of you over for dinner tomorrow night, along with as many of your friends as will come. We have plenty of food, and I think both me and my wife would vastly prefer your company to her mother's."

"Thank you very much for your invitation, Minoru," Shizuru said politely. "Perhaps we will; would it be all right if Natsuki," she glanced at the younger girl, who was still staring, all the adrenaline that had rushed into her head slowly draining, and continued, "May we come by tomorrow to tell you if we will be coming or not?"

"Sure," Minoru grinned, and then went into the store with a, "Gotta go!"

The door closed, and Natsuki remembered the panties she had so carelessly thrown on the counter, fled  
_away from Shizuru_  
into the store wordlessly. She saw Minoru putting his purchase—a pair of simple white granny-panties—into his backpack; he gave her a grin and a wave, and then hoisted his backpack with a grunt and a _clank_ over his shoulder and left.

She saw what she was looking for laying on the counter where she'd thrown it. The store owner gave her a disapproving look, and she had the good grace to look sheepish about it. She bought the panties and left.

When she got outside, new _(hem-hem) _purchase clutched tight in a ball inside her hands, intent on

_show her  
tell her_

_…_something she wasn't certain of yet, only that she was very intent on it indeed, however, her breath caught in her chest. It took her a moment of immediate searching to confirm it entirely, but after scouring all of the places a human could conceivably reach without running

_or being carried_

in the course of about half a minute, she knew it for certain, and it stopped her heart for a good ten seconds when it hit her fully.

Shizuru was gone.

* * *

Author's Note: 1750 Yen 15 dollars 12.5 Euros 

Gah. I tried to end this with more on Mai and Tate's situation, but it's just not coming right now. I'm going to post this, and probably post a shorter chapter in the next day or so involving them. I'm really sorry, everybody.

(I tried about a billion different ways to make a frowny face, but Effnet rejects them all. So this is Veg frowning in pennance. Look at me go.)


	8. The first interlude: Mai

A/N: This is a bonus chapter, and will go up at the same time that chapter 7 does. Enjoy!

--

The first interlude: Mai

After the carnival ended, I really thought I could be happy. For a few days, I was; just riding on a cloud everywhere I went. How could I not have been? Everybody that had died, that I had _watched _die, was alive. All of them. It was like the ending to a western action movie; the hero rides off into the sunset, with his (or, in my case, her) newfound lover, and they live happily ever after—or at least, that's the assumption. In my Western Studies class at Fuuka Academy, we watched some western action movies, and I always loved that ending. I saw how hard the hero worked without even a single complaint, and in a moment of wild fantasy, I think I wanted to _be _them; wanted their happy ending.

Something the action movies never show is how the hero's feelings change. How they are at all, really. We don't know if the hero resents the woman for what she made him do; if the woman feels that the hero thinks of her as more of a conquest, hard-earned but a conquest just the same. We don't know what kind of tensions they'll go through, or if they'll break up a week after they get together because it turns out they don't like each other. There are no "Happily ever afters". In some ways, I prefer Samurai movies to westerns because of that; at least at the end of those, the hero usually dies and doesn't have to worry about whether or not some obnoxious brat with a crush and a "prior claim" will get in the way of what they've worked so hard to earn.

That sounds really bad, huh? I'm never this negative in public; I think that's why I'm writing it all down. I sound really bitter, and I guess in some ways, I am. It's just that I worked _so. Fucking. Hard. _And I sacrificed _so. Fucking. Much. _Not physical things, though; not really. I sacrificed a piece of my sanity at that carnival. A big piece. And I lost a big chunk of trust for all of my friends. How do you get over it and trust somebody who tried, very hard, to kill you and somebody you love very dearly and nearly succeeded? How do they trust you when you killed them or the ones they love instead? Even if it's over now, it's not really over. It's like those Imperial soldiers still hiding out in the woods decades after World War 2 ended. **(A/N: I looked fairly hard for a more Japanese perspective on World War II; something like what they referred to it as, but I couldn't find it. If anybody has any ideas, I'd be happy to hear them, and I might even edit them in here with credit to you. --Veg) **

I still remember seeing Mikoto after she killed Takumi and Tate—I guess that sounds worse than it is, too, but not by much—and I remember forgetting all the love I had ever felt for her. I remember suddenly seeing not her face, but her external and external carotid arteries, just pump-pump-pumping away that poison and shit she must have had for blood right into her head. I remember wanting to stop that. I remember wanting to find out if that thing actually _did _pump shit and poison.

That's the thing about rage. Rage is extremely potent up to a certain point, and then you just overdose on it and suddenly, you don't feel angry at all, just curious. You start thinking about really morbid things you could do to somebody. You want to do them really, really bad. It's like being drugged. I've been drugged recently, too. A week after the carnival, after I fell off of my cloud, I had a nervous breakdown and I was hospitalized for a week. I kept seeing Takumi and Tate dying in my head; right in front of me. I kept feeling Tate's lips press on mine; kept feeling how they felt strangely light and airy as they dissolved. How we never really got a kiss, because he vanished before we really could.

I remember at that time having visitors. Everybody from Chie to Reito to Midori visited me at least three times; I was more or less catatonic when I wasn't screaming, so I have to admit, I wasn't a very good friend at that point. The only person who didn't visit me was Mikoto.

By the time we decided in the spring to go to the beach house—something I'm looking forward to a lot; I really think I can have a good time here, and maybe, with Tate…anyway—Mikoto and I were okay again; better than okay, really, but there was a lot that led up to that.

After a week in the hospital—actually, a nurse told me that it was almost a week to the hour—Mikoto showed up in my room. She didn't apologize to me. No, she didn't apologize to me at all. On the contrary; she was very, very angry at me.

I remember just thinking, _get the fuck out of here…I just want to get the fuck away from you. _When she walked in.

She walked in and we had a staring contest for about three minutes. I think I lost, but I'm not actually sure. Then she said, out of nowhere, standing at the door with her arms folded under her cute little breasts (wow, that came out way different than I wanted it to, but it stays anyway because that's honestly what I thought) "If Mai is going to sit there fighting me in your head, then stand up and fight me for real so that we can settle this."

That was the first thing that made me react. I looked up at her, and I saw that little artery again. Saw it pumping. Saw it pumping out Tate and Takumi's death; saw that confused, resigned expression on her face that she had had as my brother and my ...(I'll write it down here because I can't say it out loud yet) lover vanished in front of me. On me. In my arms. _**DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW IT FEELS TO HAVE SOMEBODY DIE IN YOUR ARMS IT IS LIKE TAKING A SHIT WITH THE DEVIL **(Page is torn here)._

That happens to me sometimes. I think it happens to Mikoto too, but she never tells me about it.

She looked down at me and said, "Go on. Get up. Fight me. Or I'll kill them both again." She spoke so coldly; that left an impression on me.

I remember actually standing up when she said this, somehow ready to fight her to the death, convinced that she was telling the truth. Once I stood up, she said, "follow."

I did. I wasn't walking quite right at that point, but to me it was like floating. My first activity in a week. At all. I remember the nurse just _staring _at me like I was a ghost. I remember being sucked back to that carnival; suddenly, Tate and Takumi were dead all over again, and I was going to kill that little bitch for killing them. I was going to fucking pop her, burn her into a little cinder block. I would have Kagutschi blow her up and then take an avian shit on her chest and then…anyway.

Mikoto led me to the waiting room, and suddenly something popped in my head, because Tate and Takumi were sitting right there. How was that possible? They were both dead. For that matter, where was Miroku, Mikoto's big sword? They both just sat there, staring at me but glancing at Mikoto occasionally, looking for some kind of cue. Takumi told me later that this had all been planned out, right down to them just staring at me, by Mikoto and Chie.

Mikoto stepped in front of me, between me and them, and said, "What's the problem? Can't Mai get them out of Mai's head? They're dead. It's just Mai and me now."

"I…" I knew in some dim part of my head that Mikoto had planned all this out, and that this it was going exactly as she had planned it. I didn't know what to do, just like I hadn't known what to do for the past week, so I did the same thing I'd done for the past week: Sit there and stare.

"Or maybe," she continued, "Mai's problem is that they _aren't _dead, and Mai just can't stuff that into Mai's skull. Maybe Mai can't reconcile the fact that all of Mai's hard work actually _got_ Mai somewhere. Just like when Takumi finally got to go to that American doctor; Mai just couldn't understand how things were really changing. How Mai's work actually got Mai somewhere; how it wasn't just something Mai did because Mai had to, with no hope of reward."

I think I stuttered an argument, but she ignored it in any case.

"So choose. Fight me here, or fight Mai. But in any case, come at me. I'm getting sick of looking at you like this."

Tate and Takumi stood up at this point to stand behind her, and they gave me a nod. I don't know what that nod meant exactly, but I did what Mikoto said; I went at her. Slowly, stumbling, I tried to charge her, to finally get at that artery.

Mikoto sidestepped me and tripped me and I fell into Takumi and Tate, who caught me with ease. I was pretty light by that point, so I can't imagine it would have been too hard; I hadn't eaten much that week, and it was all by IV anyway.

I looked up at them, felt their skin (not dissolving), their warmth. Tate kissed me on the forehead (I would have liked more, but we were in public, Takumi was right there, and he told me later he would have felt wrong doing it; it would have been like kissing somebody while they were sleeping), "There. Now we've both kissed a dead person."

I just stared up at him, and he grinned. "I'm only as dead as you are, Mai."

Takumi said exactly the same thing, and something popped in my head again. It was my sanity, only this time, it was coming back to me.

Then I felt Mikoto—warm, alive, caring Mikoto—press up against my back, and she whispered into my ear something that she would repeat many times afterward: "Smiling Mai is the best Mai there is. Mai should smile, because they're all alive."

All that coldness, that evil that had radiated off of her was gone in an instant, and I wondered if it was ever really there. I think it was this that really brought me back: I decided that it wasn't. It couldn't be; there was simply no way for me to reconcile this kind, warm Mikoto with the bitch who had killed Takumi and Tate. Even if Mikoto had done that; it was gone now. All of it. Done. Gone.

Of course, even the nurse seeing me recover miraculously wasn't enough to get me magically released from the hospital, nor was my sudden lucidity. The doctor knew—rightfully so—that I wasn't all right just like that; I had another breakdown two das later, but I recovered from it quickly, with help from nobody at all. A note from Fuuka Gakuen's head nurse, Youko Sagisawa, certainly helped my case there, (apparently Miss Sagisawa is fairly well-respected in the medical community), and the head doctor released me half a week later, with a prescription for antidepressants that I haven't touched yet. Maybe they would make me feel better, stop the bad times that still poke out now and then, but I refuse to take them. Maybe I'm scared they'll stop the good times, too.

So I don't get a happy ending yet. But I didn't die, either.

And I think that's really what's important.


	9. 7: The unnamed feeling

Author's Notes:

Thanks to all those who reviewed this time! Not to name names or anything, but COUGHCOUGH onenonly, Interstate, youneverknow, and that failed _AR-TEESTE _who shouldn't be TALKIN' 'bout what she don't KNOW CUZ SHE DON'T KNOW ME.

(Internet heart) COUGH COUGH

No, seriously.

Responses:

Youneverknow: Are you sure? Cause, you know, as a writer, I make tons of money. It could be pretty lucrative for you.

Failed Artiste: Boy, I just love the way you use an "e" at the end of your name. It makes you much more artEESTy ;)

Mostly just a continuation of last chapter here. I think this will actually be a long chapter, so I'm sorry in advance (Sort of, though I guess you guys won't see …anyway) for the delay. I'm going to try and hit up all of my characters this time.

As always, thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I own Minoru Alder, and I keep him chained to the radiator in my basement, letting him out only long enough to use him as a model to write about. I feed him raw squid, also from my radiator. My radiator isn't really a radiator.

I don't own anything else except this fic itself. At all. God, I'm poor.

* * *

_Been here before / couldn't say I liked it / where do I start writing all this down? Just let me plunge you into my world / can't you help me be uncrazy? _

_It comes alive and I / die a little more_

_

* * *

_

Chapter 7

The unnamed feeling

Minoru Alder woke up a little painfully and found that he had been stashed in a dumpster. His head hurt a lot, and his radio was buzzing off the proverbial hook.

"Minoru, where the fuck are you? If you're hearing this, Minoru, respond immediately. I repeat, respond _immediately._"

_Boy, _he thought in a daze as he observed with interest how trash had actually collected a little bit over him, _Scratch-ass sure seems panicked. What's eating him? _

"Minoru, where the fuck did you go?"

_Jesus, can't a sniper get a good night's sleep anymore?_ During the Lazy Years he had actually gotten quite a bit of sleep, even on assignments, because of how ridiculously easy they were towards the end of the conflict. (There'll be a guy shouting at _all of his troops_, gathered at the center of the camp. Yeah, even the sentries. Shoot him. He'll be the one with the fluffy hat.) He picked up the radio and thumbed the button, noting that it required a lot more effort than was really necessary. "Yeah?"

There was a pause, as though Scratch-ass couldn't actually believe that he was reporting in _now_, after all the work he'd gone through to get Minoru to say something. "Where the _fuck _have you been?"

Minoru took a brief survey of his surroundings. "It would appear," he said as he concluded, "that I'm in a dumpster. In what is quite possibly the only back-alley that this little shitpot of a tourist trap has to offer."

"And would you like to tell me how you _got _there, exactly?"

_Scratch-ass calls me just after my mark goes into the lingerie store and tells me to invite her to the beach house he specifies. He tells me to use my creativity. I tell him I'm not exactly experienced in spywork, which is why I'm a sniper and not a spy, because god damnit, you get a lot more ass as a spy. Or James Bond does, anyway. _

_I do it anyway, using the ring that I … I do it anyway, and as I walk outside, I see my mark by herself. A couple of seconds later, my radio buzzes and Scratch-ass tells me to get her out of there RIGHT NOW. I briefly wonder where exactly he's watching me from, and why he needs me at all if he can see so clearly, but I start moving anyway. Before I get more than about five feet, I—_

Minoru remembered the sharp pain in his side pretty intently when it bit at him again as he tried to extract himself from the dumpster.

"Why don't you tell me? You seem to be watching pretty intently from wherever it is you are."

Silence. Minoru was suddenly angry. He was a pretty mellow person as a rule, and he hadn't even minded going undercover even though he was _not _cut out for that sort of work, but god damnit, somebody had just used a fucking _taser _on him. Not only did that sting like a _bitch_, but god damnit, it was the principle of the thing. Like he was some kind of rapist or something.

"In fact," he said, "I think you should tell me exactly what the _fuck _it is that I've gotten myself into before I go any further into it."

"Or what?"

"Or…" What _would _he do? Would he leave? Absolutely. But then what would he do after that? He thought of a thousand different things he could say, and all of them sounded equally ridiculous; case in point: _Before I decide to walk right out of it and go home to my ex-wife so that she can use _her _taser on me for violating the restraining order. _

"Well?"

"Or nothing." He sighed. "But tell me what I'm doing here."

"Right now, you are going after the people who have kidnapped your mark. I will tell you that you were watching her because we wanted her very much alive and _un_kidnapped, preferably in our hands."

_So you wanted to be the ones to kidnap her first. Good to know that he's got his priorities straight. _It didn't particularly bother Minoru; he more thought of it as ironic; but it was the kind of ironic he wasn't sure he wanted to be employed by. It was the stupid kind of ironic. He knew perfectly well that there wasn't some mythicalbad-guy coalition that would ambush you from all sides with a well-coordinated strike if you didn't watch yourself; that if you walked in a bad neighborhood, you were sometimes just as likely to walk away unharmed because the people who were planning on robbing and raping you were too busy trying to shoot each other.

But he also knew he wasn't working for any of those people. One of the reasons the "bad-guys" didn't have the kind of money it cost to hire him was that they _didn't_ form a bad-guy coalition, give it a spunky title, and try to unite all the gangs in New York to try and take over the city.

_(Can you dig it?) _Minoru thought, momentarily amused.

"So you want me to what? Go after them?"

"Something like that. They have taken your backpack, but I don't think they know how to assemble the weapon inside of it; they're nothing more than locals with guns and the promise of money keeping them going; taking care of them shouldn't give you too much trouble."

"What fucking planet are you from?" Minoru snapped. "I'm a _sniper_, not a footslogger. I don't 'take care' of a big mob of people. I 'take care' of their leader and then I 'take care' of a big fat paycheck while the _real _footso'jers 'take care' of the rest of them; do you get me? If I tried to walk in there and take the mark back, I don't care if they were kids with popguns, they would probably have my ass for lunch."

There was a frustrated sigh from the other end of his radio, which meant that Scratch-ass wanted him to know he was getting angry. Suddenly, Minoru didn't give a flying monkey turd. He was angrier than he'd been in years.

"If you refuse this assignment, you know what will happen to you?" Scratch-ass said.

"What? You'll shoot me?" Minoru had a minor revelation. "Here's an idea, buddy. How about taking that mythical guy who's going to shoot me, and using _him _to 'take care' of the local yokels?"

"If we did that," Scratch-ass said, "Then who would we have around to shoot _you_ when you broke and ran?"

Minoru wanted to scream. Towards the end of the Sino-Russian conflict, this was exactly the kind of logic that a lot of the Russian commanders had employed; better to use their Commisars—talented soldiers, all—to shoot fleeing or cowardly soldiers than to actually have them fight. It lost them a lot of battles, cost a lot more lives that were necessary, and had contributed in large part to their final defeat and the loss of Russian Manchuria to the Chinese. He had actually been offered a job by one such Russian commander—whose predecessor Minoru had killed, but he kept that part to himself—to shoot his own troops if they broke formation.

He had accepted the job, because the money had been good and the risk was roughly zero—the Chinese had spotted him, but when they saw who he was targeting, they actually left him alone, even congratulated him on a job well done—but he had thought it stupid the whole time, dammit. It had even shaken that underused moral compass of his around a little.

And now, for this stupid bastard to be here, doing the _exact. Same. Thing..._

But he couldn't exactly do anything about it. He was now fairly well convinced that there was a sniper following him, just itching to gun him down if he ran off.

"Fine. But get me a new gun. I am not going into some barn or burned-out apartment or whatever—"

"They're currently located in a residency."

"I don't give a fuck if they're holed up in the Taj freaking Majal. I am not going wherever they are with only a pistol."

"We didn't intend that."

"You…what?"

"Look above you, please."

Something was being lowered from the rooftop. He saw just the barest flash of a black-gloved hand lowering that something down on a rope, and he made a mental note of it. _Mental note: Kill other man in black. I am the one true man in black._

"And what is this?" he asked, genuinely interested.

"Two new weapons and some equipment that we came by during our…better years. Inside you will find a new sniper rifle equipped with an infra-red scope, and a weapon of our own invention. It assembles and handles the same way as a minigun, however, so you should have no trouble using it." **(A/N: A minigun is a semi-fictional weapon, that is essentially a big machine gun, usually mounted on a helicopter. However, given the advanced nature of the world's more private organizations due to the occasional interference of the former Searrs Foundation, I have taken the liberty of allowing weapons such as this to be hand-held, braced on one's torso for use.)**

"You say that like I know how to use one of those."

"You do."

He did, but damned if he was going to admit it.

"We have provided an adequate sniping location near the house; please be sure not to kill the girl. After you have picked off any targets that you can, you will enter the house using the weapon we provided you and clear it out; you will then escort the girl back to her friends."

"And what exactly are you planning on doing about the cops when they start hearing big explosions in their quiet residential town?"

"All of your weapons are silenced, and we have arranged for a distraction. Is there anything else?"

"Just one more thing. Tell me why you want this girl so bad, and if you do, why you don't just walk in and take her yourself."

"Our police influence as of late has been rather…limited." He said it like a rich man might say, _my caviar as of late has been rather…low-quality, if I might say so. _Like he felt that he was being deprived of a right. "This distraction is about as much as we can do for the time being; the plan you set in motion recently is our method of, as you say, 'walking in and taking her ourselves'."

_If you think that after all this, that that girl is going to just walk into some stranger's house, you've got another thing coming, mister. _But he kept that to himself; the longer this assignment went on, the longer he got to brood over a sense of vengeance that suddenly swept over him._ And maybe act on it, too. _

"And so after this is over, you want me to what? Just set her on the ground and fly off into the sunset?"

"Something like that."

_Bastard completely misses the humor and he expects…god damnit_.

He wondered what rank exactly Scratch-ass held within his "organization." It couldn't have been very high; his plans didn't seem to be working out so well as of late.

The bag landed on his stomach and the black hand vanished, and his radio clicked one more time: "Go. You have no time to waste."

_Ugh._

* * *

Naturally, of the three that had collapsed to the ground, Mikoto recovered first: She was the one on top; she was the one with the eternal wellspring of energy; and, of particular importance to Mai, she was the one that was about to fucking die. She felt Mai shift her weight upwards, preparing, maybe, to leap off of her again. Before she could do this, Mai grabbed the other girl about the waist and squeezed, growling, "You're not getting away _this _time, Mikoto."

Mikoto giggled and screamed, and shifted her weight down onto Mai, who smiled.

Tate groaned in pain, feeling as though he was about to die. "Could you two lovebirds please get _off of me?_" he shouted, and then covered his mouth in alarm. He hadn't meant to shout that loud, and if the _crash _hadn't brought their present situation to the attention of the store owners, this certainly would.

On the plus side, the two girls rolled off of him immediately, easing the pain on his scrotum considerably.

Shiho peeked her head above the safety of her hands. Finding it safe, she emerged from her shelter and, not seeing her shadow, decided all was right in the world. Before anybody could say anything else, though, the store owner, another old man in an apron, arrived with a look on his face which gave Shiho cause to reconsider her decision.

"What the _hell _are you kids doing?" he shouted angrily. "Look at this mess!"

Everybody but Mikoto had the grace to look sheepish. As to the cat-like girl, blessedly ignorant of the verbal whupping-out-behind-the-shed, Mikoto simply looked curious at the arrival of yet another person who smelled like food. She was rather hungry of a sudden. (Or not of a sudden, in all honesty).

"Who's responsible for this?" The old man had a voice like moldy cabbage, and what appeared to be a personality to match. He was pointing with one withered finger at the pile of noodles. Nobody seemed to want to say anything, so Mai shook her head.

"I am, sir."

He stopped, blinked. "You are?"

"Yes, sir." She bowed slightly. "I'm very sorry; we weren't watching where we were going, and I accidentally ran into the display. We're all very sorry."

Amazed but certainly not rendered stupid, Tate and Shiho nodded in agreement, bowing respectfully as well. "If you'd like, I'll pick these up for you and re-arrange them."

"Are you kidding? Who wants to buy them now?" the owner snapped. "All the noodles are probably all broken up and everything, all—"

"Are you kidding?" Tate burst out, "They're _nood—_" Shiho headbutted him in the side (lacking the height to elbow him properly anywhere above the scrotum, which she was rather abject to just now), hard.

"You say something?" the owner's tone was positively venomous. This was not a man who would be easily swayed by cuteness or penance, though it had thrown him off-guard for a moment.

"Nosir."

"Mm. I thought so, boy. You kids will have to _work _this off, but good. I don't have another shipment coming in until tomorrow!"

"But the noodles are _fi_—" Another attempt at common sense, another headbutt. Harder, this time.

Mai grinned like a celebrity's wife in divorce court. "I suppose so. It's a shame, too; we were hoping to go next door for sukiyaki tonight."

The old man froze. "What?"

She blinked as though she were surprised. Which, of course, she was not. "I'm sorry?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, sir. I was simply saying that I was hoping to go for sukiyaki tonight, and I suppose we won't be able to."

"That place closes late," the owner countered, suddenly defensive and nervous all at once. "I won't keep you until it closes, if that's what you mean."

"Oh, that's not what I mean. I just mean that I suppose that they'll probably run out of noodles on a night like tonight, and then…"

"And then_ what_?"

Mai grinned at him. "And then he'd have to use noodles that were all broken up in his _cheapest sukiyaki in Goza_, which I still find to be moderately expensive considering..." she looked at the display. "The sale on shirataki noodles."

There was a customer in the doorway who had walked in halfway through the conversation, and she was giving the store owner an odd look. This may have been because she was a sharp customer who had caught onto what Mai was saying, or, more likely, it was because the old man with chalky-white skin and a mean complexion suddenly resembled a beet wearing an apron.

"Fine," he spat after a moment. "Pick these up and get out."

"We'll be buying one, first," Mai said cheerfully. "Mikoto here is hungry."

"Make that two. Shiho is—" Another headbutt. Tate began to wonder if Shiho wasn't feeling so much of a bout of caution as a bout of malice. Also, he felt that his ribs were starting to bruise.

"Two," Mai said anyway. "But we'll get this cleaned up right away; thanks very much!" She gave him her most winning smile and bowed one more time, and he stalked off sourly.

When he was gone, they wordlessly rebuilt the display, taking two boxes of noodles for themselves. Tate could only stare at Mai in a little bit of awe. "That was…"

"Beautifully handled?" Mai smiled. "Thank you."

"No, I meant, that was…" Tate couldn't think of a word to describe what that was. What that was _right then. _What she was. "That was…"

That was yet another headbutt. With the owner gone, Tate rounded on Shiho angrily. "Would you _knock it off?_"

"If you could stop drooling over Mai for two seconds, maybe I wouldn't _have _to in the first place," she shot back, taking him off-guard.

Mai colored a little and Tate's face turned into something awful and ugly for a moment; something very, very angry. Shiho's did the same in return. They stared at each other for a solid minute, and Mai found herself forced to look away, feeling  
_Tate is so kind_  
as though she had done something fundamentally wrong, and at the same time feeling angry enough to smack Shiho. She wanted to ask her in that instant what the fuck her problem was, but she knew the answer already, and she wasn't sure she could bear to hear it.

"Come on, Mikoto," Mai said quietly. "We should go."

Mikoto looked between the two of them—Tate and Mai—a little askew, as though she were confused. Tate looked as though he wanted to say something, and Shiho just looked satisfied. None of them, however, did anything about any of this. What followed was an extremely awkward moment in which Mai felt her heat sinking down into her right calf, followed by another; finally, after about thirty of these awkward moments, Mai simply walked off towards the registers wordlessly. Mikoto gave Shiho a curious look and then scampered off after Mai.

By the time Mikoto caught up to Mai, she had finished paying and was on her way out the door. The two said nothing to each other; Mikoto walked behind Mai like a puppy as Mai directed herself calmly around the corner of the store, around again, until they were in back, where there was a small field of grass that would have been a parking lot in Tokyo or Kyoto.

As soon as they were out of the street's sightline, Mai collapsed on her butt and Mikoto, sensing what was coming, leapt onto her, asking nothing and demanding nothing in return, and Mai wrapped her arms around Mikoto and cried.

After a while, it subsided, and Mai spoke into Mikoto's damp shirt, "Why can't he just tell her to back off? Why can't he just…"

"Because," Mikoto said with an air of perfect understanding, "if he did that, then she would be by herself."

_Tate is so kind_

"Why can't she find herself some other fuh-fuh-fucking plaything?" Mai whispered back, bitterly, still hiccoughing. "I hate that little…"

"No," Mikoto murmured. "No, you don't. You envy her, but you shouldn't."

"What do you know," Mai said morosely, less a question than a statement. Mikoto didn't take it personally. She just held Mai while the girl, weakened from  
_death_  
her lack of sleep and, maybe, worn out from fighting long after the fight was over, cried. And she never wondered once how Mikoto knew so well exactly what was going on, how she had displayed a wisdom that Mai had previously thought only Chie possessed.

In truth, the answer was far too simple to be pondered anyway. Somebody once said that love makes us all fools, but that was only half true. The other half, the half that that stupid bastard left out, is that love also makes us wiser than any philosopher.

Even if it only was with regards to the ones we love.

It took them a while after that, but they made it to their feet, and Mikoto suggested to Mai that they go find Tate and Shiho, and Mai agreed.

_The current is changing, _Mai thought again. _It hurts to change; it erodes a lot of our walls as it does, but it changes nonetheless, and then life is better for us._

* * *

Shizuru wasn't hurt, but she wasn't happy, either. She was dressed in a skirt and a blouse, and she was tied to a chair inside a dark, dingy house that obviously belonged to a bunch of males: Unfurnished and dirty in those certain areas designated to be dirty, and only moderately acceptable anywhere else.

The males, though, were not rough. No, they looked desperate, maybe, but not rough. They had treated her gently, and told her that they weren't planning on hurting her, but that they couldn't tell her what was going to happen to her.

They reeked of the kind of poverty that won't starve a man but rather, will drive him insane: The kind of poverty that one has only known since the beginning of a recession. The kind that makes him speak of _the better days_, and _back in the day_ with the same kind of wistfulness one might have when looking back on a tryst with a model.

She felt sorry for all of them, but that didn't displace her fear that they knew exactly what was going to happen to her, and she was frightened that she was going to die for it.

_Natsuki…_

And still, she felt more than anything, pain in her heart. _Obsession is a dangerous thing, Shizuru, _somebody had once told her.

She had ignored that person.

* * *

Reito grimaced as Midori walked out of the bar, not staggering yet but certainly not entirely sober, and after a moment, he followed her out, not bothering to pay for his coffee. The bartender had vanished somewhere and if Reito listened closely, which he did, he could hear a woman moaning through the walls. This suggested either pornography or a tryst, and Reito was more inclined to believe the former.

But then, Reito was also a closet cynic.

Midori emerged onto the bright sidewalk, started off without any sort of thought towards the next bar, having more or less rejected the last, and after a moment Reito followed her.

His cover was nearly perfect: He was quite adept at hiding himself when the need arose, and with Midori in the state she was in, (though he wasn't entirely sure what that state was, yet; she hadn't had that much to drink, and yet she walked with the sorrowful purpose of a career drunk) she would probably never notice him. It almost could have worked.

That is, it almost could have worked if Natsuki hadn't shouted out his name with a kind of desperation as she dashed down the street at him. A moment later, she shouted, Midori's, and that was the end of his cover.

They both turned to face her, and Reito was taken off-guard at how fast she was sprinting. When she came into full view, he was even more surprised by the look on her face: She looked both scared and near to frustrated, to the point where she was near to tears.

Midori gave Reito an evil look as she caught onto what he'd been doing, but she seemed to have sobered or snapped out of it or overcome whatever had been eating at her for the time being. "Jesus," she said as Natsuki stopped in front of them, panting a little. "What is it, Natsuki?"

Reito approached just in time to hear her say this:

"Shizuru is gone," she said, and as if that didn't stop Reito's heart halfway, the next thing did: "And I need you to drive me back to the cabin."

"For what?"

Natsuki took a deep breath, which could have just as easily been because she was a little winded as for the dramatic pause it entailed. "I'm going to get my gun."

* * *

I worked really hard to get this out today, so I hope all of you liked it! Though I hope you tell me if you don't, and why, more. Also, tell me how you liked the interlude; it's a new thing for me. 


	10. 8: Pain redefined

Author's Notes:

Reviewer's corner

Thanks to xSojix, Sei-so, Sumiregawa Nenene, Interstate 405, OriginofApplsaz, onenonly, Freeze, and saron for the BEST REVIEWS IN GOZA! Ooh-rah!

Also, special thanks to Sumiregawa for her valuable feedback during our correspondence.

Responses:

RESSICA: Actually, I'm hoping not to have to make Scratch-ass too bumbling. Maybe not even incompetent, just different. You'll see, I hope (Heart)

Sumiregawa:

Who knows? Actually, no, I don't even know. That's trouble right there.

**THIS IS A CALL TO ALL WRITERS, aspiring or otherwise:**

As of right now, the Mai-HiME section of this website is looking frighteningly desolate. (Only 2 pages of fics! Wargh!) Anybody else notice that? I'm one of the only two or three people that actually update regularly here, and it's really bummin' me out, guys. Seriously.

So write! Write! Write! It's good for the soul! If you ever have any desire to work on a co-op with me, I'd be more than happy to, depending on how my school schedule works out. I'll also be happy to edit or have ideas bounced off of me, but write write write!

Finally, it recently came to my attention that Tate Yuuichi is actually the formal Japanese version of the name, and that his first name is, in fact, Yuuichi. This is my mistake, and I'll start working on correcting it, so don't worry about it. I'm starting this chapter the proper way.

Finally, Midori's character wasn't very well-developed in the Anime, so I'm relying on the manga in this chapter, more than is probably generally acceptable. It'll be okay though; promise.

* * *

_And I know as stillness shatters / we have all been frightened by the sound of / footsteps on the pavement of our lives_

_I stand and fight / I'm not afraid to die / Elochai / bury me tonight_

_Please believe me / that the world deceives me / don't stand me up just / leave me / I have fallen again / this is the end_

--

Chapter 8

Pain redefined

Shizuru inhaled deeply as she awoke; the simple breath continued into a gasp, as many first breaths do, as she opened her eyes and found herself staring at one of her captors.

The man was tall and his eyes were dark, but there was no rugged handsomeness to add to this description. Maybe he had been handsome once, but whatever was left of it was gone. Consumed by something; by what, she didn't know.

She wasn't particularly sure she wanted to find out, either. He advanced on her, and looked her straight in the eye, and for a moment, she was sure he was going to slap her or rape her. She wasn't sure which, yet. His face was angry, but his eyes were not. What this meant, she also wasn't sure of. Again, she wasn't sure she wanted to find out, either.

"You will only be held by us until the end of the day," he said. His voice was as rugged as his face, but more pleasant; it was the voice of a loving father, a gentle man. His face told of something colder; of, perhaps, the fate of those consigned to the role of sacrificial lambs to the recession. "After that, you will be passed off to another party, who will do with you what he chooses. You have no choice in this matter. Please do not attempt to struggle."

There was a certain pleading in the way he said please. Like he was saying it to his dog as he killed it rather than face starvation.

She didn't take any particular comfort from this thought. It seemed far too accurate for her tastes.

* * *

_It's a good thing they're not holding her in a shack, or I might accidentally kill her too. As it is, the barn they're holding her seems like a perfect location for them to hole themselves up in, but in reality, it's just their mausoleum. They just don't know it yet._

_I'll show them the light, though. Oh yes, yes I will. I haven't felt this charged since the carnival ended. This almost feels _

good

_necessary. _

_I'm driving the van by myself because I don't want to endanger Reito and Midori. They're off finding the others, gathering them up. Also, I want to do this by myself. I have plenty of ammunition, and I've probably got a better eye than any of these bastards, trained ex-First District agents or not. I'll show them the light. _

_Oh yes, I will. I crash the van through the door and grind it to a screeching halt, taking three of them off-guard, crushing a fourth who was foolishly trying to guard that ex-door. The ones taken off-guard I gun down first, my Desert Eagle chewing holes in them large enough to drive a conversion van through. A convenient metaphor, or simply observation? Hmm._

_The rest are already in support positions on the upper floor of the barn. They think they've got good cover, but I also have a Desert Eagle, which eats wood and flesh without discrimination. Bullets _spang _off of the car, shatter windows, and one grazes my shoulder, but that's as far as they get. One by one, one-shot-one-kill, they jerk and lay still, guns dropping to the floor. _

_And there is Shizuru, straight ahead of me, tied to a chair, the van's headlights enveloping her in a kind of radiant aura. Perfect for her_

Ascent to heaven her head is in pieces on her blouse and the floor behind her dress is torn and ripped her thighs bruised oh god what have they done oh god what have _I _done what am I going to

"Do?" Midori asked poking at Natsuki with one her index finger as the van ate up the highway at a fairly steady 55 miles per hour. Natsuki would have liked it to go faster, but Reito insisted to her that they would lose far more time getting pulled over than they would by slowing down 5 MPH. Midori wanted to gun it, too, but Reito insisted to _her _that she was far too inebriated to drive.

Natsuki blinked, coming back to reality, and shook her head, trying to dislodge the image of Shizuru  
_pieces  
bruised  
fucked_  
and her gruesome, though wholly _fictional, _state, from her head, where it stubbornly lingered. "What?"

"I said," Midori repeated in a slow voice that could have easily been mistaken as condescension, but that Natsuki knew for a fact to possess roots in the muddy pits of alcohol. "What exactly are you planning to do?"

Natsuki shook her head. "I'm not quite sure yet, but I do know that I'll feel a lot more comfortable doing whatever I'm doing with my gun."

"No idea. At all."

"I have a few, but they don't concern you."

Midori actually took quite a bit of offense at this: "Oh, really. And this is why exactly? Because we're not the kind of people you'd like to have at your back, or because you just don't want anybody on your back?"

Natsuki remained silent, and Reito cleared his throat. It took Midori about thirty seconds to understand that Natsuki was actually a little hurt. This irritated Midori, but not more than it made her feel guilty. "I'm sorry."

Natsuki frowned. "You know why I can't let you two help me. Midori, you're not used to fighting without your Element and your Child, and Reito…"

"I can take care of myself," Reito said quietly. "But I've never fired a gun before, so I understand. This is serious, right?"

"If it's what I think it is, then it's _very _serious. I'm not even sure _I _want to get in on it."

"But you have to, because Shizuru's gone." Natsuki frowned again, a little angry at the presumption: This was excusable, in her mind, only because Midori was drunk. Just how drunk, Natsuki was starting to question. She was remarkably lucid for a boozie.

"I have to, end of story."

Midori started to argue back, but Reito silenced her by speaking more clearly. "We'll help you in any way we can, Natsuki. If that means storming the castle with all guns blazing, so be it."

"It doesn't."

"Then we'll do whatever you need us to."

Natsuki nodded in acknowledgement as they pulled up to the parking lot. "You two wait here; I'll be back in a minute. Reito, try and call everybody and tell them…"

He studied her face for a moment, saw the conflicting emotions there. On the one hand, he had the old, lone-wolf Natsuki, who didn't want anybody to know anything about what was going on in her life. That Natsuki probably wanted Reito to tell everybody something like, "Could you please postpone Karaoke for about an hour? Midori got drunk and we've got to bring her home."

On the other hand, he had the Natsuki who was a close friend of Mai Tokiha. The one who was gradually coming to understand what it was like to operate not just in a group, but in a group of friends. The Natsuki who actually attended lunch with Mai, Yukino, and Yuuichi on occasion, who visited Mai at work, who watched Yuuichi and Reito spar during club when she had nothing else to do. The Natsuki who attended school regularly, and occasionally, when she thought that absolutely nobody was looking, glanced at Takeda, the captain of the kendo club; whether this was to make sure that he wasn't sneaking glances at her or for some other reason, he honestly had no idea; but it was a sign of some kind of fundamental change occurring within her.

Of course, she also still carried a gun around. Guns were illegal in Japan, so this was nothing to scoff at.

So when he observed her face now, so conflicted, fighting a battle against none other than itself, he made a decision that he didn't know if she could make for herself. "I'll let everybody know that we can't find Shizuru, but that they shouldn't worry, because you and I and Midori are out looking for her."

Natsuki nodded her thanks, relief playing onto her face only briefly before giving way to a deadpan that genuinely frightened Reito.

Midori seemed to be sobering at this point: "In the meantime, we'll go to the police and tell them that—"

"_No!_" Natsuki snapped. "The police are the _last _place you want to go."

"Why?"

"Because if what I think is happening is happening, they'll have been the first people infiltrated. If what I think is happening _isn't _happening, then Shizuru is in no danger, and she'll turn up eventually, with…" _Tear-streaked eyes? A heavy heart? An unwillingness to look at me?_

"With what?"

"No damages."

Midori didn't believe it, but her gradually returning sobriety—she hadn't really imbibed that much alcohol, after all, and she was starting to feel her heart beat faster as she became moderately more afraid; the adrenaline dissolved the alcohol relatively quickly—told her to keep her mouth shut about it, so she did.

"Reito and I are going to scout out places in the town that we could use in case it _is _whatever you think it is."

"Places like what?"

"Places with people we can trust. If there's been an infiltration into the police department, people will have been fired, or at least paid off, right? And whenever that happens, people will be talking. Sometimes it takes a few drinks to get them to talk, but they'll talk anyway. Small towns like this always talk."

"You're starting to sound a lot like Chie," Reito said, but he was grinning, and so was Natsuki.

_Not Chie. Somebody else…_

_Not thinking about that. Having a good time on vacation, or possibly saving Shizuru from certain doom, but not thinking about that._

"I learned it on the road," she grinned brightly, the polar opposite of what she felt, suddenly.

Natsuki nodded to them both and got out of the car, and as she slammed the door, Reito said, "Oh yeah, you went off artifact-hunting with that professor, didn't you?"

Midori nodded with a small, moderately somber smile, looking down at the dry-brown purple of the fabric she sat on. This was female-speak for _Shut up. _Reito knew this quite well, so he laid off, and for a few moments, there was silence between the two of them. It was at least moderately awkward. This really bothered Reito.

"So," he said, forcing his tone to be something other than an awkward-silence-breaking-small-talk tone. "What have you decided to study at –"

"Stop," she said in a quiet voice. She leaned against the window of the van, closing her eyes. "I'm very sorry, but please just stop. I want none of what you're offering, Reito."

"I'm not offering anything," Reito said, a little annoyed.

"Then you don't need to talk about it," Midori said. "Please. Just don't talk for a while."

Reito frowned. "Are you okay, Midori?"

She shrugged. "Are you?"

He grinned at that. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I could think of a few reasons, but I don't need to bring any of them up if you'll give me some time to my own head."

"And what good do you think that's going to do you?" he growled. "Brooding does nobody_ any _good."

This time, instead of thinking it, Midori snapped and practically shouted it. "You just. Don't. _Get it, _you snide _fuck!_"

This, Reito took in stride, with a grin. "I hope someday you'll explain it to me."

* * *

The purple-haired girl was making for the cabin. Nori Ikimasu followed her with his weapon's scope. 

From the window, he watched her opening her bag. She pulled out…something…he couldn't see what it was; only the glint of black metal. It looked a little like a gun, but Nori was not imaginative enough to allow himself to be swayed that easily.

It surprised him, however, when she started testing the sights of the gun she was apparently holding. Surprised him enough that his finger twitched on the trigger a little, in reflex, as she pointed it in his general direction. This was sheer reflex, however, as he was a good sniper, and he had learned long ago not to shoot anybody reflexively unless they gave him a good reason for it.

Perhaps if his finger had not been so twitchy, everything that transpired thereafter would never have occurred, but the shadow doubted it. The shadow was really, though he hesitated to admit it, just looking for an excuse to kill the man who was pointing down with a large sniper rifle at the cabin of people she called _her friends._ Eventually, she probably would have just killed him out of a kind of preemptive-strike instinct.

Either way, Nori Ikimasu died a second after his finger twitched as the shadow, moving with practiced silence and agility, leapt down from his spot on the treebranch above the sniper, and landed with his feet on either side of the man's torso. In the same motion in which she bent her knees to absorb the shock, she also plunged her double-bladed knife—which she had made herself after her old one had disappeared—into Nori Ikimasu's spinal cord, severing it in a single stroke to prevent any sort of reflexive action. (such as pulling the trigger). He died without any clue what killed him.

The hardest thing for young warriors to remember, however, is to consider their surroundings to their fullest. Young warriors—shadows included—are often at least a little brash, assuming that once they kill their target, their job is over, because they will be able to fade before any sort of alarm could be properly raised.

What this particular shadow failed to consider was the fact that Nori Ikimasu was on a hill with a very heavy weapon with a heavier scope. The weapon dropped out of his limp fingers—one of the benefits of severing the spinal cord as a mode of death was the total body relaxation it entailed, as all of the nerve stems received no final orders and all of the tendons relaxed as they ran out of energy provided by said spinal cord—and bounced down the fifteen yard slope. The shadow cursed, but supposed it made no real difference in the end.

The fact that Natsuki started shooting at her _immediately _was kind of annoying, though.

* * *

Natsuki fired one half of her clip at nothing at all before something burst through the window, knocking the gun out of her hand and throwing her to the ground. For one blind second, she thought, _ninja_. 

For another second, she thought, _that's absurd. There are no Ninja left in Japan._

Then, as her eyes focused on the ninja standing in front of her, she reconsidered yet again, opting for a third option of _what the fuck _is _that?_

She hazarded a guess, using her past experience to guide her, and prayed she wasn't wrong and that if she was, she developed superhuman speed to avoid being killed by the nasty-looking knife at the ninja's side.

"Akira?"

The ninja nodded and pulled off her black facemask to reveal the pleasantly masculine, yet still overtly feminine, face of Akira Onuzaki, Ninja. She blinked a moment before she became lucid enough to say, "I take it that that ninja outfit was not just something you did for show as a HiME."

Akira grinned a little humorlessly. "You take it correctly."

"I won't ask."

Akira grinned and offered her hand to Natsuki, who took it and allowed the surprisingly strong little girl to help her up. After she balanced herself, she went to where her gun had fallen, picked it up, dusted it off, safetied it, and started sifting through her bag again.

"Can I ask what you're doing with an illegal…" she paused to take in the sheer magnitude of the semi-automatic handgun that Natsuki seemed to have obtained. "Ah…"

"An illegal howitzer. I think that's the word you're looking for. I got it off of one of my contacts."

"And you did this why, exactly?"

Natsuki sighed, stopped rummaging, and steeled herself so that she wouldn't sound as unbalanced as she felt when she explained it to Akira.

* * *

Midori really wanted to smack Reito—the little shit just never gave 

_Six gunshots in extremely rapid succession. Loud ones, the kind that positively _scream_ "Don't _fuck _with me, I've got a freaking hand cannon right here."_

Up?

Reito jerked in panic and his head rotated something near 180 degrees as he whirled around to look for the source of the gunshots. After remaining in that state—_he looks like the girl from the exorcist, _Midori thought—for a solid three seconds, his torso whirls around to make him not-ethereal again.

This, of course, was an exaggeration of Midori's mind, but he _did _panic pretty hard. That wasn't to say that Midori didn't as well, but still. She actually jumped and let out a little yelp, and in the process banged her head on the roof of the car. She sat there while Reito stared out into the untelling woods behind the cabin, positively determined to spot the invading army that was most certainly coming to kill them.

_Owowowowow…son of a _bitch. For the second time that day, Midori violently cursed herself; her

_immaturity_

panicked reaction, her lack of a clear head. She wished desperately that she hadn't drunk nearly as much as she had, and at the same time desired—in ways that couldn't have been entirely proper—a bottle of beer. Or something harder. She found that she was actually shaking. Really, really hard, in fact. If there really was somebody that was coming to kill them—all of them, starting with Natsuki and Shizuru and working their way down the guest list—and they'd already gotten to Natsuki down there, what could _she _possibly do? She had _no _weapons; _no _experience fighting with anything but her Element.

For the first time, Midori became acutely aware of the fact that she could no longer fight as she had been able to last year. She was no longer a HiME; she could no longer leap yards into the air, summon Gakutenou, and slice an enemy to ribbons. She no longer had _protection; _no longer had the kind of power that gave her a one-up on regular people. As she realized this; that a single man with a single gun could now kill both her _and _Reito with very little trouble, she began to shake violently.

There was utter complete silence in the van as the echoes of the gunshots—a torrential wind pounding on a microphone connected to speakers whose volume was in constant flux—slowly died out. It was amazing how long those things lasted. The tension only fed Midori's sudden, pounding sense of fear; fear that somebody, in any instant, could put a gun to the window of their van and gun them both down.

She had really thought that _that _would make her immune to the fear of death. In reality, it only made it stronger in her, more prevalent. As she felt her arms wrapping themselves around her shoulders, though, and she felt her knees draw themselves up to her chest, the tension that hung in the silence of the car started to strangle her.

Being a HiME hadn't directly impacted Midori afterwards; rather, it had only made her more determined to enjoy her time with  
_not thinking about that_  
to enjoy her time more thoroughly. It had tipped her balance, but it hadn't unbalanced her; adding the straw _before _the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. Her insecurity—guarded, hidden away under every last one of those pieces of straw—had stayed gone. But what was in her head now was like a record player that needed a whupping; that single line, repeating over and over in her head, not even a thought so much as a background: _You can't do it. _

"Midori?" Reito's voice interrupted her lack of thought.

She didn't look up from her knees, and suddenly, his voice was…not panicked, but urgent. "Midori, what's the matter?" He shifted into the bench she was sitting on from his position in the front seat, and he started to reach out for her with his hand—not a perverted one, but a genuinely empathetic hand.

"_Don't touch me!_" she shrieked, and he drew back in shock. "Don't you fucking touch me, Reito Kanzaki."

"Why not?" his voice was very serious, and Midori wondered privately how he could be so easily distracted from the fact that it was entirely possible that they were both about to die.

"Because…" he was moving closer again. She backed up, but a few inches after she started, she bumped into the window. "Because I don't want …death…"

He looked at her strangely. "I won't hurt you, Midori."

"Says who?" she whispered bitterly, staring straight past him and into

_the face at the window with a gun pressed in her right hand staring straight at the two of us she's _

the lovely face of Natsuki Kuga.

Reito shouted in alarm, staring past _her_ as Akira Onuzaki's face appeared in front of him, moving towards the passenger side door. The girl gave him a look of something like disdain, but not quite.

* * *

"Would you like some water?" one of the men who had taken her asked in as kind a grunt as he could manage. He held out a dirty bowl of water, not in disdain, but in a kind of _it's all we have _way that suggested that maybe she was getting a treat instead of a bucket of shit. 

She shook her head, saying nothing, and looked at the man: Tall, with big forearms and a big gut that suggested, to her anyway, one too many nights at a local booze-and-boobs joint. Too many lonely nights there. _The pastime of the impoverished, _she thought.

But the look in his eyes wasn't cruel. Only a little desolate, a little resolved. He stared at her, and for one terrible moment, an automatic instinct in her body screamed at her, _run, he's going to take his pent-up energy out on you! _It was the same instinct that told people, _don't talk to strangers: _They might do bad things to you.

"What is it?" she asked, afraid but only superficially.

"Are your restraints too tight?"

She shook her head. "No." And then cursed herself a moment later; if they weren't, they would be now that he knew that she might be able to get out of them.

Indeed, a moment later, he walked around behind her chair and started fiddling with her restraints. But instead of tightening them, a second later, she felt them fall off of her wrists, and hit the floor. A moment later, the feet.

She stared at the man in awe. "What are…"

He looked straight at her. "You can see that we're poor. Desperate. We have very little; the recession took most of what we have. We can barely afford to heat the water for rice. We _steal _the rice."

_Is he letting me go?_

"I haven't decided yet whether or not I'm going to let you go. A lot of it depends on when your visitor is coming; but I do know this: Just because we are poor, does not mean we are animals, and we would never, _ever _treat a lady such as yourself like an animal. If you are indeed going to die, we're not going to keep you tied down like a dog waiting to be put down."

"Then let me go," she said quietly, feeling something tugging at her heart.

He looked away. "I don't know if we can. I don't know if we have time before your guest comes to see you; if you're gone when he gets here…we…"

_They'll all die. _She filled in the rest of his sentence with disturbing ease._ Honor has its end somewhere in all people, and I can't blame them. If it meant seeing Natsuki again, I would do the same thing._

Again, the niggle in her head: _Obsession is a dangerous thing, Shizuru. _

Again, she ignored it.

"You'll know by tonight." He turned to leave. "Please don't try to escape. You're in a basement, and the only exit is locked and guarded. The window is barely enough to get reception for a television, so don't expect to crawl out of it." At this, he gave her a funny look. "There are enough of us to keep you captive, and people are always watching." Another look.

He opened the door, revealing another big, depressed-looking man who was, indeed, standing guard.

Just before it closed, he whispered, "I'm sorry. Please stay away from the window."

It took Shizuru three solid minutes to understand that she had been wrong about her captors twice in the past day.

_Honor has no end for these men, because honor is all they have left. _

They hadn't taken away her cellular phone, which was still in her pocket, and they had just told her that she could get reception.

And they had just told her that _they too _were being watched.

That had been the true meaning of the sadness in his eyes. It was the sadness of a samurai as he laid out his place settings for his ritual suicide.

_Best not to waste their deaths, then, if that's what they will have._

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Natsuki.

* * *

They were pulling slightly over the speed limit, but they also hadn't seen a policeman since they'd been there. The four of them—Akira, Midori, Reito, and Natsuki, hadn't said a word since they had entered the car. 

Natsuki's phone rang a little more than halfway back, and about three seconds after Natsuki answered, her eyes widened—what was that look so prevalent in her eyes at that moment? Reito, sitting up front with her, couldn't tell—and she nodded twice and hung up.

"Who was it?" Reito asked as casually as he could considering that a casual look at the dashboard told him that they were starting to accelerate. A lot.

"Shizuru."

Midori gasped, and Akira's eyes flashed, and the two of them leaned forward.

"She's being held in a house, she doesn't know where, but it's fairly dingy, in a poor part of town."

"There aren't that many parts of town to begin with," Midori commented, having been startled out of her bout of insecurity into something resembling the leadership she usually put forth.

"Right," Natsuki agreed. "She asked me to come get her, but then she said…"

"She said what?" Midori frowned.

"She said not to hurt her captors if we could help it."

Akira frowned. "For her to be able to use a cell phone at all tells us that maybe her captors are…"

"Double-agents? For who?" Natsuki was suddenly angry. "None of this makes any _sense_." She pounded the steering wheel, which once again attracted Reito's attention towards the dashboard. He noted that they were now pushing eighty, and asked, calmly, that Natsuki slow down.

"_Fuck _that," she snapped back. "That was the last thing she told me, was to hurry. That she might not have much time left."

Reito said nothing more, only prayed that there were no cops between them and the poor part of town, wherever that was.

* * *

Minoru was on the top of the tallest building in town, looking down on a dingy, shitty little abode. To be fair, the tallest building in town was only five stories tall—it was an apartment building for the marginally-impoverished. The ones who didn't have to squat in a shack like the one he was aiming at. He had the sniper rifle he'd been given out—a 50-caliber sniper rifle! He couldn't afford _that _with all the money he had in the bank! (Though, to be fair, that was partially because of how hard it would have been to get his hands on it.) In his new black bag: Several clips full of 50 caliber ammunition, and ten large banana-style clips for the odd weapon that they had included. 

He had asked Scratch-ass, and had been informed that the working title for this weapon was the "Battle Cannon." Apparently, it was like a small tank gun; it latched securely onto the torso, and fired individual shells—roughly 50mm, with explosive tips that could be swapped out for fragmenting tips. It had virtually no kick—the stabilizer was mostly to compensate for the weight. Apparently, it was the cutting edge. To him it looked more like a jump back to the days of Howitzers, but in the style of _Honey, I shrunk the kids. _

He activated the infra-red scope and watched as ten small red blobs appeared in his field of view. Of them, he estimated that four were on the top floor where he could be assured a kill on the first shot.

Completely set up now, he could only wait for his distraction. As he did, he searched for the person who was apparently still watching him, but there were a dozen buildings with five dozen windows between them; there was no way to do it without his scope, and he had a nagging instinct that told him that if he did that, maybe the person would just shoot him and be done with it.

He _did _spot one interesting thing with just his eyes, though. There was another man on the roof of the clothing store across from him, which was situated on Goza's main drag; the man himself was sitting on a ledge, with_ another _big sniper rifle in his hands. He wasn't aiming at Minoru, but rather, the basement of the house.

Minoru's eyes widened and he grabbed his radio, thumbed the button.

"There's another sniper. Tell me that's ours, please."

"Is he sitting on the ledge of the_ Clever Needle _fabric store?" Scratch-ass replied almost instantly.

Minoru sighed in relief. "He's one of yours?"

"No. But we'll take care of it, don't you worry. Just get ready to start shooting when we tell you to. Also, move ten yards to your left; you're in view of the main drag right now." Unsaid was _and I can see you._

Minoru frowned. _Creepy bastard._

But he picked up and moved anyway.

* * *

Chie grinned as Aoi emerged from the changing room wearing something that most definitely did _not _suit her. It was a small pink bikini, with the bare minimum of coverage where it was supposed to count. 

Not that Aoi didn't look good in it, Chie amended. It was only that for a girl as shy and modest as Aoi, it was certainly

_an improvement_

a change. "Are you planning on wearing that outside, Aoi?"

Aoi grinned a little and did something Chie had never heard of her doing before: She winked. Letcherously. _At Chie. _The girl stood there dumbstruck for a solid half-minute as Aoi laughed, and said, "No, not really. I just wanted to see what you'd think of it."

"I think that you're a dirty son of a _bitch _is what I think," Chie laughed along with Aoi. "And I think your mind's pretty well lodged in the gutter right now."

Aoi shrugged. "Maybe it is."

"Aoi? Acting scandalous?" She looked quickly over her shoulder as though something had caught her eye. "What…is that _satan? _Eating _ice cream?_"

"Oh—" Chie never did find out what was oh.

A man emerged from the changing booth next to them and gave Aoi a look that was a little bit _too _appraising before he left.

"Hey pal," Chie snapped at him, "The goods aren't for sale, so stop fucking window-shopping and wait till you get home to play pocket-pool."

Aoi looked only partially shocked. Chie had a tongue to her, it just rarely came out as it had there. The man gave them a moderately satisfied grin, as though they had gotten what was coming to them, and started to walk out. Chie frowned. _This is the girls' changing room. What the hell was he…_

What happened next was forever ingrained into Chie's head in slow-motion, as traumatic events often are: In horrifying detail.

A girl walks past the two of them, eying Aoi in particular. The girl is tall and pretty, with boobs to rival Mai's. She's carrying an outfit smaller than Aoi's, and Chie wonders in some far-off corner of her head how she plans on fitting into that while staying out of a jail cell for indecent exposure.

She opens the door, and Chie hears a small _beep_ing sound. She tenses up, and gives Aoi a look. Aoi, not understanding, doesn't return it. The girl says, "Somebody left their bag in here," and Chie looks into the room, where she sees a large, black backpack. The backpack is beeping steadily. Like a countdown. Later, she will feel guilt, thinking that this girl has saved their lives, but knows in another part of her brain she trusts her own instincts more than that.

She's studied American history quite intently, so she knows exactly what this is. She screams, _run! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! IT'S A BOMB! _As loud as she can, but only Aoi, forever trusting Chie with a strength that will later drive Chie to tears, listens to her.

The two of them tear out of the store, just as the door shuts behind the creepy man. As soon as they hit the street, they dive off to their left, and Chie screams, "_Everybody get down!" _

Nobody does. The townies, all creatures of routine and habit, simply go about their business.

The pavement is really hot, Chie thinks as she tackles Aoi and covers her with her body.

It's a lot hotter for the people who didn't move. The store windows explode outwards in a ball of flame that seems to Chie for a moment to be Hiroshima round two. In spite of the deafening roar of the explosion, she swears she can still hear the screams of the people inside; she can certainly hear the people outside screaming as the ones in front of the store are incinerated almost on the spot. Chie herself feels her back being singed, but it's only her coat. She saved Aoi only from a burn mark, but feels shamefully proud, nonetheless.

As the flame vanishes, she stands up and scans the street for the man. He's gone. Of course.

After it was over, as with many traumatic events, things were slightly more blurred in her mind.

* * *

Minoru could have sworn he heard people screaming as the storefront ballooned outwards in a massive ball of fire. The other sniper certainly went running as fast as he could as soon as he picked himself off of the ground. 

Something inside of him, though, was shaking. It was that pesky compass, he estimated.

"Minoru," came Scratch-ass's voice over the radio. "This is your distraction. Don't waste it, please."

_You're just doing your job you're just doing your job you're just doing your job. _He repeated this over and over in his head, hoping to believe it in the next few minutes. Then he exhaled deeply, calmed his shaking hands, and centered the first man's head in his crosshairs.

* * *

Oi. LONG chapter. Hope you like it! 


	11. 9: Only the strong survive

Author's notes

First off, I'd like to thank Sumiregawa Nenene all her help! This is including but certainly not limited to helping me fill up a few of my shakier plot holes and characterizations. They'll be filled in in this chapter, since I hate to let a hole go like that.

Also, thanks to all who reviewed! Interstate 405, Sumiregawa, Meo, onenonly, xSojix, Astarael00, and Insane Alecto! (Rather than applause, laugh track misfires) (Veg: Son of a bitch.)

Interstate, if you ever need somebody to bounce ideas off or anything, I'll be happy to help.

Insane Alecto, I will indeed explain all, _especially _about Midori; she's not normally as bitchy as I'm making her, and I do indeed have a reason for this. I'll try to cut down on the cursing, too; thanks for turning me on to that. (But bear in mind, it's natural that you wouldn't catch any of the characters swearing much—they were characters on a network TV show, after all :3 )

Disclaimer: I don't own Akira, even if he's nothing but a bag of bones. (You get a gold star if you can tell me where that came from. I'll also glorify you in the next chapter's notes) I don't own the angst, either. Wait, yes I do. I own all of it. Anywhere. Ever. MUA. HA. HA life is pain.

Finally, I should point out that this chapter really deserves an M rating for the imagery contained in the first two pages. If you're the queasy type, you might want to skip a little further. (I'm not going to switch the rating just for this chapter, though.)

* * *

_What makes you think that it'll all work out in the end / afraid to feel that I don't have to try and pretend / I'm immortal / immune to all that is wrong / just keep on wishing _

_It's mine / it's pure and / as decent as I can make myself / inside / we all know_

* * *

Chapter 9

Only the strong survive #1

Sometimes it only took a little nudge to bring Mai out of one of her spasms. Sometimes it took just a hug from Mikoto, a grin from Yuuichi, a good meal or a song played on the radio. And then, sometimes…sometimes it took a big fat fucking shove.

Mai supposed that she had recovered quickly enough from her most recent one that it could be placed in the former category. She also supposed, as the storefront window of the scandalous little clothing shop exploded outward and Chie and Aoi dived to the ground, that as a nudge in the right direction, this was some big fucking overkill. If there was any trace of bitterness or depression in her system, it evaporated along with about seven townies standing outside of the storefront window at the time of the explosion.

(Chie and Aoi would later become the official Sole Survivors of an event that would never be named, but would be remembered by the town's inhabitants for centuries to come regardless. More than a little bit of bitterness would emerge from the townies on account of the fact that it was tourists that survived, while many of their friends and family were practically vaporized in the explosion, on top of that; but Mai's vacation ended long before the time that was necessary for such bitterness to fester could pass).

She chanced a single glance at Mikoto, whose face was remarkably impassive considering she had just witnessed the deaths of seven-odd people, and considering that Mai had a feeling that if she looked carefully, she could probably spot pieces of about a dozen more.

Mai chose not to look carefully, but she did dash towards Chie and Aoi; the latter was just now picking herself up, but the former was already up and walking; Mai saw blood running down the back of her legs from what she could only assume were cuts on the front, and the back of her shirt was pretty well burned off, leaving a pretty ripe-looking burn in its place, but aside from that, she was unhurt. Physically, anyway.

Mai noticed that as she approached, Chie gave no indication of perceiving her presence, even as Mai shouted out their names frantically. Mikoto came trotting up behind them a few seconds later, just as Aoi managed to get to her feet, still in a daze. She hadn't yet caught up with the present, but she would in a moment. She hadn't even registered that she was falling out, in a big way, of her skimpy little swimsuit that she must have been trying on. The swimsuit had a huge fray at the right shoulder, as well, probably from falling over, Mai gauged. It would snap soon. Again, Aoi took no notice. She latched her hand onto her forehead, groaning.

"Mai?" she frowned. "What are you doing here? What hap—" she looked over her shoulder and her sentence simply fell away. "Oh, god."

The bodies of the dead were little more than burned husks, except for one piece of them: The explosion, which hadn't dropped below shin level, thanks to some solid construction on the foundation, had left the husks' feet and ankles intact. Completely intact.

This made the burned corpses undeniably human. Their feet; their name-brand sneakers, their trendy heels, their painted toenails—one of the feet was so freshly un-painted that there was actually a small flame eating at the shiny, flesh-colored toenail—they belonged to _people_, not vaguely-human objects.

And Chie couldn't take her eyes off of them. Mai wanted to go to her, but in the next instant, Aoi was latched onto her like a vice or a certain persistent cold. She wasn't screaming, for which Mai thanked whatever god happened to be listening (however privately certain she was that whichever deities typically paid attention to the earth were all sitting on the pot about now, or watching porn, or whatever it was that a god did when it couldn't bear to look anymore), though the girl was making small noises between her teeth. It sounded vaguely like a frightened dog learning to whistle, Mai thought in some sadistic niche in the back of her head.

_Son of a bitch; somebody needs to move Chie before she loses it. _Mai felt tears rising to her own eyes, which she kept focused firmly _away_ from the bodies. People were starting to gather around now, and none of them made any sort of motion to help Chie. Nobody recognized her; just another out-of-towner, the fewer the better. She came here to stare anyway, right? Let her stare. Mai, being from something of a small town herself, recognized this mentality immediately, but she couldn't sympathize with it, not at all; this recognition had, in fact, an inverse affect on her: Before long, she felt that familiar little niggle of hatred, of pure, focused rage creep into her eyes from the back of her mind. Familiar from before. From  
_mikoto dear god how could you my god im going to fucking_  
…from before.

"Mai?"

She wanted to turn, but the weight around her shoulders wouldn't let her. _Yuuichi._

"Ma…shit, Mai! What the hell is—"

"Forget about me," Mai shouted, though she desperately, desperately did not want to. All at once she wanted nothing more than to _be _comforted rather than to comfort, to be held rather than hold.

_Is this what you've been reduced to, Mai? _something in the back of her head mused. _Just a pathetic little lost cat? Is that all?_

_…no. _"Forget about me, Yuuichi, get Chie! Get her away from here!"

It was barely a second after the words left her mouth that Yuuichi passed her at a full-out sprint; like he'd been ready to rescue Chie as soon as he saw the devastation unfold in front of him, and that he was just waiting on her permission. Mai heard Shiho sigh a little as Yuuichi left her. _Too fucking bad, bitch, _Mai thought angrily, suddenly possessed with the overwhelming urge to slug the girl.

Brave Private Yuuichi once again threw himself in on top of the proverbial grenade as he ran to Chie; in front of her, replacing her view of seven-odd burned corpses with manicured toenails with a view of his chest. This, at least, was his intent; Yuuichi was assuming that as she was really seeing, as she stared so intently, anything in the present at all.

"Come on, Chie," he said quietly, putting his hand on her shoulder about as gently as Mai had ever seen. "Let's get you out of here."

She didn't move; it was like her feet had been soldered to the ground when she turned her back. There was no kind of fear in her eyes; none of the horror or regret or revulsion that some of the other townies were experiencing. Her eyes were at about half-mast, completely neutral. _Right now, we may as well be on Mars; she's not seeing anything that's happening here, _Yuuichi thought. Mai saw him tighten his grip on Chie's shoulder, putting a little bit of force on it, trying to lead her as he

_led me  
yuuichi is so kind_

might lead a timid puppy.

At that point, Mikoto snapped out of whatever trance had been keeping her ensnared, and without any sort of pretense, she…tip-toeing was nearest thing to it, but she wasn't trying to be quiet…went up to Chie from behind, tugged on the back of her shirt.

"Come on," she said quietly, and suddenly all eyes—all of them, even those of the Townies—were on her. "They're dead now. There's nothing that you can do." There was a dead hush, as though she'd just declared something completely obscene. Maybe she had, and a moment later anger began pouring off of the locals in waves that could kill a man if he wasn't careful.

Then she walked back to Mai, her own eyes towards the ground. She had certainly lost her spunk all at once, though she wasn't nearly as…shocked, for lack of a better word…as everybody else seemed to be. "Let's go, Mai," she said quietly. "I'm hungry."

Mai knew Mikoto very well. She knew her, quite possibly, better than any human being still alive at that moment, but she couldn't…she couldn't quite place that look on her face.

_No, you know exactly where you've seen that look before. That innocent little lost puppy look that she gets on her…when she's done_  
takumi evaporates in a cloud of neon green  
yuuichis lips arent soft theyre gone  
_something awful._

_Mikoto, _Mai thought in a sudden, gut-wrenching moment, _did you—_

Mikoto looked into Mai's eyes somberly, and Mai could have slapped herself if she didn't have a one hundred and twenty pound bag of trauma strapped to her chest.

Mikoto was feeling the exact same thing she was. Horror, but more than that, sadness. For everybody present. Mai's throat tightened, and she mouthed, "I'm sorry," at Mikoto, who only nodded a little and started walking the other way.

It could be said that this moment was truly the point in which the town turned against their group: Chie began to respond to Yuuichi's movements, just enough that where he guided, she went; Mai whispered to Aoi, "we have to go now," and the girl detached herself from Mai, seeming to have recovered herself fairly well. She whispered, _thank you_ to Mai, who nodded with a smile and then went to Chie, took her hand, finally nodding to Yuuichi, who caught up to Mai.

They all walked away from the place where more than twenty people died, horribly. Nobody could claim that it was their doing; they didn't even know what happened. But the sight of the six of them just walking away from something that _they, _and _only _they of all people had survived, pushed the townsfolk beyond the point of caring about things like "fault."

But the six of them didn't know that. They just started walking away, back towards where the van was supposed to be. If they had cared to listen closely—which they didn't—maybe they would have heard the first few muffled _phunks _of a silenced sniper rifle being fired into the roof of a house. Maybe they would have even known what to make out of it.

But they didn't.

* * *

Natsuki, Akira, Reito, and Midori could only gape as they blazed down the main drag towards the poorer part of town, to a location provided by one Akira Okuzaki. She, it seemed, had all the answers at that point, but when questioned about them, she merely shrugged and turned back towards the window to gaze at the road blazing by at a speed so high, it should have been illegal. (And was.) Somewhere behind them, sirens were beginning to blaze towards them, but they knew the sirens weren't concerned with a van doing fifty over the speed limit in the least.

Reito murmured, "My God," gaping at the bodies with a kind of morbidly fascinated revulsion.

Midori turned her head away. She had no urge to see any more death than what she'd already seen in her lifetime; there was more of it in her memory than most people would have guessed looking at her.

Akira watched the townsfolk, paying attention to how they observed the death around them, how they dealt with it. Who looked passive and who looked frightened. Two of them; both large men in golf sweatshirts, looked remarkably impassive about the scene in front of them. She locked their faces into her mind.

Natsuki jammed on the brake, hard and sudden enough that were the van not equipped with anti-lock brakes, they would have probably skidded into the strip-mall's storefront. As it was, all of the passengers of the van except Akira went flying forward until their seatbelts locked up around their chests and necks. Midori and Reito gave a noise that was fairly analogous to a pair of twins being strangled; before they could protest, though, Natsuki looked at the two of them intently. "Get out of the van."

"What?" Midori sputtered, rubbing her neck. "Why?" In truth, she protested more because she didn't want to go out there than because she didn't want to stay in the van. At that moment, she wasn't entirely sure where she wanted to be.

"Because everybody's out there, and I think they're in trouble."

Akira nodded. "The way the townsfolk were staring at them was not something I would want to be on the receiving end of," she said. "Something's happening, and you two should go investigate it."

"Nuh-uh," Natsuki and Midori said at once. They gave each other a look, and Natsuki proceeded, "You're going along as protection."

This wasn't precisely what Midori had planned on saying, and it showed in her eyes as she stared at Natsuki in disbelief. "_Protection?_"

Akira sighed. "You are determined to go alone, Natsuki?"

Natsuki nodded as though she hadn't heard Midori, and then turned to face forward again. "Everyone out."

"Natsuki," Reito murmured, "You don't even know where it is you're going."

"That's true," Akira agreed. "You don't. Do you see that house up ahead? The one with the brown tile at the end of the next block?"

Natsuki nodded.

"There."

Natsuki took a moment to study where Akira had indicated. After a moment, a small, bitter grin slid onto her face. "How long have you been having your Okuzaki clan watch us, Akira?"

The shorter girl grinned a little herself; possibly her first genuine smile all day. "Long enough to be embarrassed about not being able to prevent Shizuru's kidnapping."

"You didn't want to blow your cover, huh," Natsuki didn't sound angry, but it was a docility that spoke volumes of her true rage; both at Akira's clan, and the girl in general. In the back of her mind, though, she understood vaguely that in the grand scheme of things, the Okuzaki clan's anonymity was more important than the safety of any one person, to them. She couldn't honestly blame them for not butting in. She would have made the same decision.

_But it's Shizuru, and that makes it…  
Makes it what?  
Inexcusable? _

"Waitaminute," Midori said, suddenly excited. "You mean to tell me that the Okuzaki clan of Ninja is still…God, that's one of Japan's most archaic…and you…"

"Shut up, Midori," Natsuki said mildly. "You can be an anthropologist later."

"But…"

"Later." Natsuki actually smiled, feeling a little better as Midori's overwhelming obsession with her profession once again stole her away from the morbidity of their present circumstances. "Out. All of you."

"Natsuki…" Reito began, but Natsuki didn't let him finish.

"You too, Reito. Shut up."

A very special talent that many women possess that most men lack is the ability to end a conversation without really ending it; without any sort of "this conversation is over" or "piss off," they can speak volumes via some mystic combination of their tone and their aura pertaining to the current status of their conversation. Men are only just perceptive enough to pick up on it, usually; in this case Reito felt it pummeling him like a desert wind.

He got out of the car without another word, because he knew that if he was going to speak again, he would probably say something he would regret later; like, "yes, ma'am."

The last one out of the car was Midori, who lingered for a few moments.

"Natsuki, you'd better not be planning on doing what I think you're planning on doing," Midori said evenly. "Because if you are…"

"Yes?"

"If you are, then you shouldn't. It's a mistake, and a big one."

"If the professor were in danger," Natsuki asked as mildly as she had before, "wouldn't you do the same thing?"

Midori gasped, froze for a moment, and Natsuki realized that she'd struck a nerve; though which one, she wasn't entirely certain. Before she could ask, the door slammed shut and Midori walked way at the pace of a privately raging woman.

And even so, in spite of inviting the rage of an untold number of people in that town, and among her friends, in the span of five minutes, as soon as Midori was clear of the car, she jammed down the gas pedal. Behind her, the first ambulances and fire trucks began to arrive, and she thought, _too little, too late._

_The story of my life._

* * *

The first man died without having any idea that he was in the middle of a war. On Minoru's infra-red scope, there was a short flash of red as his bullet impacted with the man's head and exploded, and then his form dropped and its shade of red got lighter. Minoru never even saw his face, which was unusual for him; usually the one part of his target he _did _see was the whites of his eye.

_Funny_, he thought. _Usually, when you shoot a man, he starts to stain a darker shade of red. This time, it's the opposite._

_It's only a job. Stop being introspective; that's something that puddle-of-angst snipers do. _A commonly accepted fact in Minoru's world was that puddles of angst rapidly got over themselves, or they became puddles of blood in short order. Even during the lazy years—he had actually seen snipers die because they were too busy angsting over the people they were killing, or being introspective over the meaning of life through a bullet, or some such nonsense. He was happy to be removed from that, dammit. _Get a grip on yourself. _

Minoru took a moment to remember to pull the slide on the side of the gun back again, dropping the old shell, chambering a new one. The really high-caliber weapons needed to be manually cocked—an automatic mechanism was frailer than a manual one, and these things kicked like a motherfucker—certainly hard enough to bust up a badly put-together system.

The next person he thought less about. He was only a couple feet away, and Minoru put a bullet through his skull without bothering to think about how he couldn't see panic through an IR scope. He didn't give a fuck. He was a sniper, not a philosopher, and this was _only a job. _

A red blob appeared on his scope in about five places in the house; it started out very small for a moment, but only a moment, during which Minoru was positively baffled.

That was, until he realized that the people were slowly starting to blend into the blobs of red.

_Fucking space heaters you've got to be SHITTING ME. _It took Minoru all of five picoseconds to understand that these guys had definitely been forewarned as to his presence. He wondered for a moment if he'd been betrayed, but realized he probably hadn't been.

Minoru Alder was not generally a lucky man, or if he was, he didn't tend to bother about it. He was a firm believer that luck got a man killed if he relied on it too much. In fact, he mostly took luck as just another form of skill; something that he set up by himself and just happened to fall into place a little better than he had planned on. In that respect, he was a little like a spoiled child; he had come very close to dying a few times, but as a general rule, things for him had gone pretty well during his lifetime. Besides, a lot of times, those near-death experiences had more to do with his ex-wife than anything else.

Today, though; today was different. Today, Minoru Alder was a very, very lucky man. He started searching, slowly, for targets in the house, frustrated that he had to go so slowly because with each second he wasted, any targets—they were moving around to distract his aim, _somebody fucking _warned _them _which meant that he couldn't get a solid shot on any one of them. As he did this, for just the barest second, something flashed in his eye. The kind of flash that you got from a laser aimer or light off of metal. For the barest instant, he was blinded, and in that instant, he thought, _laser aimer…?_

He flung himself to the roof of the building instinctually, and in the next instant, a bullet whizzed above where his eye had been in the instant previous. _Off to your left, _he thought, and then: _What the fuck? They have another sniper?_

He thumbed his radio. "Hey, you over there," he said, praying that Scratch-ass hadn't chosen now, of all moments, to go sit on the pot. "I've got an enemy sniper on me; I think that guy from before relocated. Can you see him?"

There was no answer, and he rolled over about a yard and a half, also by instinct, an instant before another shot cracked through the wall where he'd been. _One second-two-second-three-second-roll or die. That's how long it takes a guy to throw a bullet in the pie. _A nonsense rhyme he'd made up one night when he was drunk, a night he commonly regarded as the best drunk of his life, mostly because the rhyme had saved his ass more than a few times.

_Son of a bitch now is _NOT_ the time to be taking a shit, scratch-ass! _

_Three-second roll or _he rolled and another bullet cracked through the wall.

_Fine then, fuck you right back. _Minoru hadn't had an old-fashioned sniper duel in years, but he still knew how to do the dance. _I am almost forty years old, and I'm willing to bet you're not more than twenty, by the way you shoot as fast as you can _he rolled over _reload. _

_Also, he's got… _Minoru glanced at the wall in front of him and gauged the size of the hole as best he could. He couldn't get a real measurement, so he filed it under the _really fucking big _class. The same kind as he had. _And an IR scope—that's how he can see me through the wall._

Something like betrayal niggled at the back of his head, and he shoved it out of the way for the moment. Now was the time to—roll two feet to the right as pieces of brick showered him painfully—think.

_This clip holds six shots. There are four bullet holes, and the one that almost took off my head at the beginning. _

Then, immediately after, a number of thoughts at once:

_How long will it take him to reload?  
Is it really the same gun? Will it hold more?  
What if he's fighting with one in the chamber?  
What if he's not?  
What if you can't roll over in time?_

He rolled over twice and one more bullet cracked through the roof, and then all of the thoughts vanished. He stood up, looked straight through his scope, and saw exactly who he was looking for—a red blob in the window across from him, half-calmly yanking the clip out of his rifle, grabbing a new one, and

s_queeze._

Dropping to the ground, with a big fat fucking hole in his head. Minoru lowered the gun, grinning with satisfaction, to see who exactly it was he'd killed.

He couldn't really see very well, to be fair. The building was far enough away from him that it was hard to make much out, but he did see one thing very clearly.

He'd just shot the other man in black.

_Son of a bitch, _he thought, but not so much because he was rapidly coming to understand that he'd been betrayed.

Rather, he cursed to himself in that instant because he knew that there were plenty more Men in Black, and even if none of them were presently watching him, they'd be gunning for him soon enough. _Nobody who has the kind of resources to throw out a man at will has only one Man in Black. _

It was that, he thought, and the fact that he didn't have a way to get out of town. He hoped he still remembered how to hotwire a car. There were no idiotic thoughts of vengeance in his mind—he knew better than that. Now, he thought, was the time for running. Fast.

He started by running for the roof exit.

* * *

Natsuki turned left at the intersection before the one she would have needed to take to get to the house, and pulled up at the curb.

_Inhale.  
Exhale.  
Just like before._

Trouble was, it had been so long that "before" was starting to become blurry in her mind. It had been a long time since she'd fought anybody outside of a dojo, and she didn't honestly know how up to par her skills were.

_Then use your head, fuckwit, and don't fight if you don't have to._

She shook her head and got out of the car, shut the door, but didn't lock it. There was nothing inside to steal, and it was better to be able to get in quickly in a pinch.

_Or is it better to lock it so that somebody has to break a window to lie in wait for you?  
Either one could get you killed, but you can't do both. _

She sighed, a little depressed at her inability to decide; she'd never been this bad before, had she? Of course not. She was nervous. Nervous that she'd mess it up, and then  
_head in pieces on her blouse and the floor behind_  
some _unnamed _evil may befall Shizuru. She made sure to mentally shout _unnamed, _to drill it into her head.

In the end, she locked the door and stuffed the keys in her pants pocket; they were tight but secure there. Since the car had an electric lock, she could unlock it on the run and be much safer.

She crept through the yard between her and the house as quickly as she could; she was creeping more out of habit that was, much to her delight, steadily beginning to creep its way back into her mind. She pulled out her cell phone and her gun about midway through, and dialed Shizuru's number again. She picked up on the first ring and said, in a remarkably calm voice, "Hello?" As though she had no idea at all who was calling her.

"Where are you?" Natsuki asked in a hushed voice as she squinted to see inside the window of the house that was facing her. A moment later, satisfied that she wasn't being watched from that side, she started to move, quickly but quietly, towards it.

"I am in the basement. There is a window nearby, but I can't get out of it."

"Where is the entrance to the basement?" Natsuki pressed herself against the wall of the building.

"I don't know." A pause, and Natsuki started inching towards the door. "Are you coming to rescue me, Natsuki?" A tone of…amusement? Disbelief? Condescension?

Natsuki didn't say anything for a moment. Her heart was now hammering in her chest for more than one reason, and her grip on her gun—right handed, as always—was very, very tight; her finger was locked right on top of the trigger, but the safety was still on. Incidentally, her thumb was on that.

"I guess I am," she said quietly into the phone.

"How should I take that, Natsuki?" Shizuru's voice was as calm and solid as a frozen lake, though nowhere near as cold.

"Please," Natsuki whispered, her breath coming in shorter breaths now, more rapid. "Not now."

"When, then?"

"Later. Just not—"

"Who are you?" The man's voice wasn't particularly afraid considering he was only peeking his head out the door, which covered the rest of his body. Natsuki closed the phone immediately and dropped that hand to her side, twisted her body so that her gun was behind her back.

He was staring at her in the way that all armed people stare at other armed people: Nervously.

She doubled her gun hand back and aimed it at his head. She saw the barrel of a shotgun peeking out of the door, saw it freeze as her weapon lined up with his head.

"There are about ten cops two blocks away," he said carefully, his eyes locked onto the weapon with a kind of nervous fascination.

"I'm sure they'd be delighted to find you with a nineteen year old girl locked in your basement," Natsuki countered. "Move. I don't want to hurt you, but I will."

"Why? Is the girl down there worth the lives of eight men to you?"

That hit her deeper than he'd intended for many reasons and on many levels, but she managed to keep her face deadpan. "It's not a question of worth right now. You people are in my way, and if you don't move, I'll deal with you." She let it sit at that, pulled the hammer on her weapon back; this was strictly for effect, as the weapon could be fired without touching the hammer.

"Could you kill all of us, do you think?" he mused.

"If you're speaking ethically…" Natsuki grinned. "I've killed more than eight people in my lifetime. The person downstairs has killed many more than I have."

He frowned, and Natsuki narrowed her eyes. "Count of three. If the gun doesn't hit the ground and I don't see your _whole _body, hands in the air—" she didn't get to finish the sentence; he vanished into the door. She cursed and clicked the safety off of the gun, and leapt up onto the nearby windowsill. After a moment's hesitation, she clicked the safety back on the gun, flipped it so that she was holding the barrel, and shattered the window with the butt before dropping back to the ground.

A moment later and another reversal and safety _click _later, she was inside. She moved slowly now, her footsteps nearly silent, her weapon held out in front of her in a two-handed grip, her left hand cupped under her right. The house was completely silent, though the door had closed itself behind her with a small _click. _It seemed that her distraction had done very little overall.

Natsuki moved very, very carefully, sweeping each room for people, doors, hiding places, before she moved in full view of it, acting with a skill borne from years of paranoia.

She found herself, shortly, in a hallway. The hallway had only three ways out: A door to a kitchen on her right; a staircase straight ahead—long, wooden, and a little creepy in its utter straightness—and where she'd come from.

She swept the kitchen. Left. Cabinet and Fridge. Right. Wall and window. Up. Tiled ceiling, light. Down. Cabinets.

The house was utterly silent.

She moved into the kitchen. There was only one exit: A staircase. Downward. _Bingo. _She began to advance, never losing her sense of caution.

_Step.  
Step._

Something creaked behind her. She whirled around and had about half a second to dive forward and left before the man she'd seen earlier fired his shotgun straight into the kitchen. The buckshot pellets sprayed a wide pattern, carving a rough ellipse in the wall behind her. A pellet grazed her shoulder, making her wince.

She didn't let him get off a second shot. His eyes widened a little as she went flying towards him, moving on instinct rather than intelligence. Intelligence would have been to shoot him. Instinct was to land a solid kick in his midsection, buckling him. His breath left him in a _woof_, and she followed it up with a flat-palm to his nose. He didn't drop his shotgun, but blood gouted and he staggered backwards, shouting in pain.

Still eyeing the shotgun, she used his momentary incapacitation to grab his gun hand with her free one. She straightened it out as best she could in the half-second she had, and drove her gun hand butt-first into the elbow, which broke with a sickening _crack. _

"Ichi!" another person up the stairs. He had an axe. She wouldn't have so much luck with hand-to-hand fighting an axe; therefore, it was instinctual to her what she did next, too: She raised her weapon and fired once, twice, three times into his body, aiming for the chest with the first shot.

Natsuki Kuga carried a rather unrealistic weapon for somebody of her size: It was technically a Heckler and Koch Mark 23 SOCOM, (a military weapon that her contact had bitched about for months before he finally accepted her payment—very _hefty _payment—and gave it to her) but it had been more accurately described earlier as an "Illegal howitzer." It's .45 ACP rounds were specifically tailored for stopping power at range, probably under the assumption that anybody that it was being fired at was _also _a man with a military-class physical training.

At the range that Natsuki was at, about ten feet, it really did act like a howitzer. The man's chest exploded backwards; then his right arm at the shoulder, then the corner of his head. The stairs behind him were instantly slick with what used to be inside the man, and Natsuki looked away. It was enough to make anybody look away; she had been prepared to kill him, but not that gruesomely. The man at her feet shouted something, and she walked away from him, told him absently that he should "kick the shotgun into a corner and leave now, before I shoot you." She knew he'd complied when the door slammed.

The descent down the stairs was easy. There was no blood soaking this staircase. At the bottom, there was a man who just stared at her; she pointed her gun at him, and he shrugged and opened the door.

And there was Shizuru.

"You've come to rescue me," the girl said a little bitterly. "How wonderful."

"Let's go," Natsuki said quietly. "Now."

Shizuru nodded and started walking towards her, and then the man spoke. "Did you have to kill Nayo?" he asked.

Natsuki nodded to him.

"He was more with them than he was with us. He was truly desperate." The man looked at her with sad eyes. "I am sorry to see him die, but I can appreciate his death nonetheless."

In that moment, Natsuki had no coherent thoughts. Only the undeniable impression that maybe this man was, somehow, more of a warrior than she would ever be.

Or maybe it was the opposite.

Maybe it was that what blocked this man from being…whatever it is that he wanted to be…was far stronger than whatever blocked her from…

Shizuru said, "I'm very sorry about Nayo," quietly. "And about Nobu and Keitaro as well."

The man shook his head. "It wasn't your fault, Shizuru Fujino." He gave a small bow. "Nobu and Keitaro least of all. We think they were taken out by a sniper."

Shizuru frowned. "A sniper? Whose?"

He gave her a bitter smile. "How should I know?"

_Yeah. How should you know? You're just the one who does the killing. _

_Or the dying._

"Thank you for everything," Shizuru whispered, her voice tight. Natsuki saw tears in her eyes. The man nodded back, not looking at her, and then said, "Go. We'll try our best and escape; don't you worry about us."

She nodded mutely, and then looked at Natsuki strangely.

Natsuki didn't understand, but somehow felt that she'd done something horrible in that instant. Later, Shizuru would deny it, but for now there was zero comfort on that end.

"All right, then," Natsuki said. "Lets go."

So they did.


	12. 10: Heroes

Author's Notes

Reviewer's corner:

Thanks to Unit 667 Ra, Sei-so, youneverknow, Interstate 405, Insane Alecto, and Lone Wolf Biker for their reviews! Yatta, Yatta! Yatta!

(Laugh track misfires again) (Veg can be observed kicking the shit out of it.)

Thanks to Sumiregawa for all of her _extremely _hard work help on this and the previous chapter! And believe me, kids, there was a lot of it.

Sorry about the delay in getting new chapters out, all; college is really kicking into gear now, and I have less time than I used to. Updates will probably be more sporadic from here on out; probably about two a week instead of one a day.

I'm very sorry about this, and I am grateful to those of you who opt to stick with me through it. You have my sincere appreciation.

As I write this, it seems increasingly that I will have no space left to finish off my scene with Shizuru and Natsuki this time, because while I have been putting this off for far too long, (and I apologize), I have been putting Mai and Yuuichi off for even longer; I will make every effort to write a shorter chapter and have it out by tomorrow featuring only Shizuru and Natsuki. Be on the 'lert, folks, cause it's going up roughly six to eight hours from now.

Finally, for those of you who think that Akane and Kazuya have vanished, they haven't. I'll probably be giving them a larger part in later chapters.

Thanks for bearing with me!

* * *

_Stare in wonder / who's here to bring you down / find your martyr / I'm sure you made the crown / so light a fire under my bones so when / I die for you at least / I'll die alone_

_It ain't nothing for me to end up like this._

* * *

Chapter 10

Heroes

Reito was the only one of the three that had gotten out of the van that had to give the corpses a wide berth, and he wasn't happy about this. Akira and Midori, it seemed, were a lot more used to dead bodies than he was, and for some reason, he seemed to take this as a kind of subtle blow to his masculinity.

Not that he would ever admit it in public, of course.

As a result of his stomach requesting, very forcefully, that he stay at least ten meters away from the nearest corpse at all times, it took him several seconds of sprinting to catch up with Midori and Akira, who were making relatively good time in reaching Mai and the others. Midori didn't even look at him when he did, and Akira gave him only the barest of nods. Reito took it in stride as well as he could, but he felt a sort of deliberate insolence coming off of Akira at that point, and he felt the first glimmers of annoyance, even anger, floating up to the top of his head. _What the hell is their problem? _

When they were close enough to be heard speaking at a tone of relatively normal pitch, Midori called out Mai's name; the girl turned, and stopped when she recognized who was speaking. It took her a moment, and though her expression seemed a bit…vacant, Reito thought, it wasn't anywhere near of the caliber of the utterly blank expression on her face at the beach.

_That award, _Reito frowned, looking at the rest of them, who stopped and turned when Mai did, _goes to Chie. _

Chie looked like shit. Reito felt that it was important to note this, for some reason. Maybe because it was the first time he had ever seen her looking like this.

Akira, Reito, and Midori caught up to them, and there was silence powerful enough to pop an eardrum for a moment; they were, by now, far away from the storefront, and the dim, omnipresent hum of a curiously envigorated townsfolk was long out of earshot.

Midori most of all seemed to be having trouble speaking, so Reito said, "Are you guys okay?" This, obviously, was not the question that any of the other two with him wanted to ask, but he understood very well that those questions should be left until some other time.

Mai was the first to nod. "We're alright; Chie has a burn on her back, but we're going to tend to it when we get to the van."

Reito was too perceptive to believe that, and he made it clear on his face, but he didn't argue outright. "The van isn't parked where we left it; Natsuki has it right now."

"Natsuki can drive?"

"Yes. She can drive very fast."

She didn't ask why Natsuki had the van.

"What do we do, then?"

Silence. Reito thought hard; they couldn't wait around for too much longer; something gave him a nagging feeling that they needed to get back to the cabin as soon as possible. On the other hand, he understood based on the look that he'd seen on Natsuki's face earlier that it wasn't possible to call her, either. That calling her might result in her death.

He chanced a look at Midori; the girl was staring at the ground, not saying anything; her face looked…depressed. In a way that she hadn't ever really looked before; she looked almost hopeless. When he looked back, the rest of the group quickly looked away from Midori as well; they'd all been staring at her at the same time he had been. Waiting for some kind of answer from her.

_And she didn't notice._

More of that good old-fashioned Genuine Human Concern flooded into Reito's head. _Midori is usually the one to "voluntarily" demand leadership; the one who really gives us a direction. What the hell is up with her? _

"Midori," Reito said quietly. "What do you think we should do?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know?" Midori snapped, and Reito jumped; he hadn't been expecting that measure of (relatively violent) lucidity from her. "I'm just as lost as you guys, okay?"

Reito allowed the silence to last for all of five seconds, and then sighed. "I guess we should just wait here. More than likely, Natsuki will be back soon."

"Unless she got killed," Midori murmured, and Mai and Aoi gasped. The two of them began to sputter individually, as though they were caught up in some kind of race to see who could express the most coherent disbelief the quickest.

If Reito didn't have such strong control over his facial expression, he would have been scowling at that point; instead, he simply said, "Okay. Then we wait here for ten minutes, and then we go after her," quickly enough to cut off Aoi and Mai. He gave them a look to drill the point home, and they shut up. It was probable that this was the rudest thing he'd done all day, though he wasn't sure at this point that it would be the rudest thing he would do all day.

"And get ourselves killed too."

A few eyes were wide and only getting wider; Reito could see his snapping point, and it wasn't terribly far from where they were now. "Excuse us," he said to the group, and then to Midori, "Come here for a moment, would you?"

She shrugged like a sullen teenager, and Reito led her off about five meters from the group, all of whom were staring at them. Reito was well aware of this, so he turned his back to them and murmured to Midori, who was standing with slumped shoulders, "Would you like to tell me what the problem is, Midori?" He said it as diplomatically as he could; which was saying a hell of a lot.

"No," she said immediately. "I don't, Reito, and I'd appreciate you stepping off right now."

"That's fine," he said, "but if you're not going to talk about your problem, it would help out a lot if you would stop drawing so much attention to it." _Like a little fucking third grader throwing a temper tantrum. _Reito was a _very _diplomatic sort. "I'm well aware that I'm not suited to the task of directing a group in a crisis which involves a potentially large amount of violence, but I'm also well-aware that _you _are. And if you're not going to do anything about it, then please at least stop making waves for the rest of us."

Midori said nothing.

"Aoi and Chie are hurting. Really, really bad; I think they were right there when all those people died, and if they're not messed up over it now, they will be soon, okay? I don't know what exactly has come over to put you in this bad of a mood, but I'd ask," he said the next part very, very politely: "Please. Deal with it on your own time. Right now, other people need your help."

She stared straight at him, and Reito thought privately that he had never seen quite so much quiet desperation thinly veiled by a sort of forced hatred before.

"Please," he said quietly. "I'm at a loss, too." He put his hand on her shoulder, and she shook it off, muttering, "Don't touch me."

_At least she's not shouting this time around. _He grinned at her as best he could. "Sorry."

She shook her head and turned away from him, walked back towards the group.

Very, very privately, in the utmost, buried recesses in his mind, the misogynist in Reito's brain wondered quietly, _I wonder if she's on her period. _

Something else in Reito's head told him, firmly but fairly, in the manner of a pacifistic interrogator with a thumbscrew in his back pocket and a smile on his face, that if he ever said something like that out loud, his death would be as slow and as painful as any that this world had ever seen. What really convinced him was when that part of his head told him, almost offhand, "She'd start with your balls and work her way from there."

He winced a little and started to follow her.

Midori was already talking when he got back, her voice more controlled than he'd ever heard it before. This, he knew, was normal; when people need to control themselves, to hide their secret desire to explode and destroy half of a city in one massive fireball, they tend to overdo it and give themselves away in the utter passiveness of their face.

"—here with Aoi and Chie; I can't imagine you guys are in the best way right now yourselves," she said. Mai and Yuuichi gave each other strange looks, and Shiho gave a _harrumph, _privately wondering why _she _had to stay here with _her, _just because some storefront had exploded or something. "I heard that," Midori snapped at Shiho. "If you don't like it, you're free to go ask one of these nice folks if you can borrow _their _car because you don't want to stick around." She pointed at the small mob of townies, a few of whom were now crying as they recognized their loved ones by their marvelously-intact feet.

_Maybe she isn't covering quite as well as I'd thought._

Yuuichi and Shiho positively gaped at Midori, as did Mai. Mai, however, was doing so with a small, barely-perceivable measure of satisfaction.

"Reito, you stick around too; Akira and I are going to go looking for Natsuki over by where he said they were; she says that she's got at least one person watching us right now, so we should be pretty well safe as long as we're cautious."

Midori sighed irritably, then thought, _I thought we weren't thinking about that. I thought we weren't letting that ruin our mood.  
We _weren't, _until that fucking bitch went and rubbed it in my face.  
That bitch you're going out to check up on, you mean?  
Yeah. That one. _

Somehow, this seemed to pacify the little argumentative niggle in Midori's head. That little niggle of depression morphed into rage for the supposed purpose of releasing it.

Before, Midori had had only one real response to depression: She went very nearly catatonic for anywhere from a week to a month; barely eating or sleeping, staring at the television for as long as it took to forget about the really, really big shit.

After  
_that  
not thinking about that_  
though, it hadn't gone away. She had spent a full month doing what she did second-  
_third- but you don't get that anymore_  
best, and it didn't help. Eventually, Youko had discovered her. She had given her, out of respect, a four-week grace period to do her thing, but after that, she had said, it was time to start healing.

But she didn't. Not even close; this was depression as Midori had never felt before. A kind of mind-numbing, all-consuming feeling that sapped everything she had.

Her "recovery" was essentially based around something that Youko had said almost in passing: _Anger and sadness are almost exactly the same. The only difference is how you deal with them._

"And what about you?" Mai asked. "Are you going to be okay in…that kind of situation?"

Midori had taken to working out as hard as she could; running, swimming, anything she could find. She was fairly lousy at fighting; she had taken to kickboxing in whatever free time her workout schedule afforded her, mostly with a bag. The bag won more often than not, but it was still what she needed. Mostly, she won on the days where her depression was worse than usual.

Today, she supposed, was one of those days. _All because of a little side comment, just like with Youko._

_But that's just how it is. _

"I'll be fine."

Mai nodded seriously. She didn't want to argue, but more than that, she saw something in Midori's eyes that she'd never seen before. Something that well and truly scared the piss out of her.

Mikoto murmured something from her side, and Mai thumped her on the top of the head lightly, hearing the girl say something that sounded a lot like _hungry_. "Later," she murmured.

Midori started off after that, and Akira followed. Neither said anything. They jogged like that for a few minutes, down an alley and onto the street where Natsuki had parked.

They spotted the van quickly enough: It was the only conversion van on the street tilted up at a thirty degree angle, and they left their jog off there, started walking as casually as they could considering that Akira was still halfway dressed like a Ninja. People on lookout always locked onto hurried movements before they locked onto casual ones, and both knew this for their own private reasons.

Strangely, it was Akira who broke the silence. "I know it's not my business," she said quietly, "but you should probably tell somebody about what's bothering you eventually." Her tone of voice made it pretty clear that she had absolutely no desire to be "someone." Akira had never made a point of getting involved in people's personal problems, having ignored most of her own for the vast majority of her life.

"And why, exactly, is that?" Midori said, annoyed.

"Because eventually you're going to make somebody angry beyond the point where they'll forgive you. And I have a feeling that in spite of how you are right now, you'd wind up regretting it. Dying without regrets is important," she said this last part sagely, in a morbid sort of way.

"What the hell do you know about dying?" Midori said, bitterly. She regretted it almost the instant she said it.

Akira moved so fast that it was barely possible to track her; with the kind of grace she usually reserved only for killing people, Akira rounded on Midori, stepped in front of her, hopped up a little and slapped her. The impact was sharp, painful, and it twisted Midori's head a little; Akira was a strong girl.

"I have seen more of my friends die than you would care to imagine," Akira murmured. "I get past it, because if I didn't, then I may as well be dead myself." She paused for a moment, and then her voice turned at least halfway to venom. "Am I being clear?"

Midori looked straight at Akira, and her eyes began to water; her face turned ashen, and that little piece that Akira had been missing snapped into place.

* * *

Reito really did feel bad about leaving Mai and Yuuichi alone with Shiho and a pair of halfway-catatonics to follow Midori, but it certainly wasn't any less underhanded than what he'd been doing up till they'd run into Natsuki that day, and besides; Mai and Yuuichi understood completely. There was something very seriously wrong with Midori, though Yuuichi had warned him offhand before he left, "She's taken. Older man." 

Reito knew this already, of course, though he didn't take it as an insult that Yuuichi had felt it necessary to remind him; (a guy that he knew only as "the professor" with whom he was only vaguely familiar, but whose reputation in his field far was far-reaching, and who Midori was, last he'd checked, completely snookered over) and it presented a whole knew set of thoughts and conclusions to his brain, none of which seemed any more feasible, nor any less, than the others.

One of them stood out in his head, brought on by the woman's reaction to Natsuki's question, _if it were the professor were in danger, wouldn't you do the same thing? _But he dismissed it pretty readily: If he were a short old man and a spunky, beautiful, very well…-possessed…young woman like Midori was suddenly all over him, he wouldn't give it up for all the gold in a rich man's teeth.

And yet, it was this singular impression that was the only one that really stuck in his head, even after his dismissal. Quite simply, Midori was acting like a woman scorned, and scorned harshly. It created kind of a paradox in his mind that his male-ness wouldn't quite allow him to get over.

And it was this singular impression that came flooding back into the top of his head as he rounded the corner out of the alley and saw Midori bury her face in her hands and cry. Her beautiful red hair settled a moment later over her hands, over her back, over her shoulders, and her whole body shook with a kind of silent misery that tugged at Reito in a lot of different ways. Akira was there, looking more awkward than anything. The tall girl patted her on the shoulder as best she could, and in a moment, she spotted Reito, who could only stand staring, completely shocked.

Akira beckoned him over with a look of combined panic and well-disguised empathy, and Reito started walking as quickly as he could.

And all the while, Midori sobbed, quietly but still obviously, into her hands as her hair danced, a fiery wave in the middle of a tumultuous ocean, about her shoulder.

Reito reached the two of them and put a hand on her shoulder, a lot more supportively than Akira had been able to manage. "Midori." She flinched but didn't twist away this time.

"Well, good to see you've got this under control," Akira said, speaking quickly. "I'll be going now. You know, checking up on Kuga and all. Thanks for your help, Kanzaki!" Before Reito could utter even the first syllable of a protest, Akira was gone, vanishing with a speed borne of a Ninja scared witless for the first time by a potentially awkward situation. Reito shook his head.

He stayed silent for a moment after that, allowing Midori to simply cry. _By herself._

As soon as that thought occurred to him, he put his arms around her, and this time, she tried to pull away.

But this time, something was different in his mind; before, he had always been relatively passive when it came to rejection, not that he'd had to deal with much of it in his life.

_You were a villain once, Reito, _he thought. _However unwillingly, you were a villain, and you hurt all of these people, and you should be so, so thankful that they didn't just walk away from you for it. Even if it wasn't your fault. Hell, if it had been somebody else, you'd probably be scared witless of their _shadow

_And now you need to make it up to one of them, by being a bastard to her. A bastard and a hero. _He thought privately that those two things had more in common than most people cared to admit.

He tightened his grip as she tried to shrug him off, refusing to let her go.

"Don't touch me," she whispered, and he shook his head.

"Nuh-uh."

"Don't touch me." A little shakier this time. "Goddammit, get off of me, Reito. Don't touch me."

"No." Then, more softly, "Why?"

"Don't touch me." She allowed him to pull her closer, though, in spite of this. She didn't trust him, but she did. Maybe it was the sharp contrast between this gentle, kind, _platonic _(however much she didn't want to admit it) touch and the icy gaze of the Obsidian Lord that had inhabited his body; as though Reito himself was the definition of good and evil; he'd possessed pure evil in his body, so now what could he have but good?

It made a lot of sense to her at that moment, and she relaxed in his arms, and let herself cry as she had before; in hushed, turbulent waves.

After a moment, she whispered, "When did you guys get my letter? The one that I sent with the picture of me and…" she paused for a moment, "and the Balagan ruins?"

"Right before spring break," Reito said, a little confused. "Why?"

She chuckled bitterly. "That means that I sent that letter almost three months before it arrived. I guess you can't trust the Israeli post office after all. He warned me about that."

It clicked in his head a moment after that, and he turned her around to face him, his mind made up to…

_To what?  
Not now._

"Midori," he said quietly. "I don't know why that old man would leave you, but you still have a lon—"

Midori actually laughed at this, and he stopped, taken aback. Her laugh was long and painful; the kind of laugh Reito might have expected from somebody who's just heard a funny joke at their father's funeral.

"You stupid, stupid, stupid bastard," Midori spat, now meeting his gaze; her eyes looked slightly unbalanced at that point; somebody who's been pushed past their breaking point. "That man didn't leave me. He would have never done that."

Reito frowned, that little part of his head that made him smart in school broadcasting alarms all over the damn place. "What…then…" Something was sinking inside his stomach.

"The professor…funny how I still call him that, after all this time…after all we…"

"After all you what? What happened to him?"

Midori took a steadying breath, giving herself time, perhaps, to prepare for what she was going to say. She looked resigned, now, more than anything.

"He … the Professor died about a week after we took that picture. He wasn't really _old_, but he wasn't young either, and he had a bad heart. All the excitement in Israel, with the Ruins and the scavengers…just…it just took it out of him, and he had a heart attack in the middle of some fucking _shit-creek _desert halfway between Tel Aviv and god's asshole." Reito had never heard Midori so bitter, nor had he ever heard her so profane. He had also never heard her talk about herself in any way; maybe the three were related. "By the time I was able to find a place to call for help, he was dead."

_Dead… _While Reito's stomach was busy working its way into the corner of his ankle, Midori sniffed and wiped at her eyes, her throat working but her face calming.

"Midori, I…"

_You what?_ Midori thought bitterly. _You want to comfort me? You feel bad? You're…_she thought about it like somebody else might think about vomiting, _sorry? No. _"Stay away from me, Reito," she said quietly, after a moment, having regained control of herself. All the bitterness and profanity had retreated back into her eyes, where, Reito knew, it had been lurking all along. "Just…stay away. I don't want your help. Any of it"

And with that, she turned and walked towards the van.

* * *

Mai looked straight at Yuuichi, and then away as quickly as she could, looking for some readable sign on his face that he was having as hard a time as she was. Because Mai was indeed having a hard time. On the one hand, there was Yuuichi, who was presently in the midst of coping with an extremely annoying Shiho. On the other hand, there was Chie. 

Aoi had long since given up trying to "snap her out of it," as one might in a movie by slapping her or some other such nonsense; she was too much of a pacifist to actually try slapping her with any kind of force, and the traditional "shake and shout" methods seemed to have done nothing but make Aoi look funny in front of everybody. Which didn't bother her, but still. Finally, defeated, the girl lapsed into simply holding Chie's immobile form in one arm and her hand in another. If it hadn't been so morbid, Mai thought _very _privately, it would have been kind of cute.

As for Yuuichi and Shiho, they were fighting again. Something about what Shiho's problem was, why couldn't she just try being nice for once, why won't Yuuichi just accept her for who she was. Nothing that Mai hadn't heard a thousand times up to this point.

And so, she busied herself with Mikoto. Sometimes she felt honestly bad about this, about using Mikoto to simply distract her, but rarely; and besides, the girl seemed as though she needed a little bit of attention right now.

"How are you feeling?" Mai asked Mikoto quietly. "You don't look so good."

"Fine," Mikoto shrugged. She really _didn't _look so good; she looked distressed, though not precisely upset over the whole thing. "Didn't like seeing that."

"Me either." Mai shuddered a little. "It was all too—"

"Familiar."

_I wish you hadn't said that. _

"Yeah."

There was silence between them for a moment, and Mikoto used the opportunity to take Mai's hand in her own, an act which Mai accepted gratefully.

"Mai?"

"Mm?"

"Did Mai ever forgive me for that?"

Yuuichi stopped arguing for a second, let out a small, strangled cry. Shiho looked up at him, perplexed by his sudden, abrupt drop in hostility. Mai was immediately, vividly aware that Yuuichi was paying very, very close attention to her.

She also was vividly aware of how quickly her thoughts had turned against Mikoto when she'd seen the destruction, the carnage that had left Chie as she was.

And even past that, at the same time, she was aware of how easily Mikoto had …fixed her. Every time she had needed it.

_She asks for absolutely nothing in return.  
Now she is asking for something. That look on her face…it's guilt. She feels that she's hurt me somehow. _

Mai nodded, slowly. "I do, Mikoto. I forgive you." _I do. Please, please, please don't reject that. _

If Mikoto had caught what Mai had meant by her change of tense, she didn't let on. Instead, she grinned, and Mai grinned too in spite of herself.

"I didn't mean to—" Mai started

"Mai didn't mean to do anything, so she didn't," Mikoto cut her off.

"Big brother," Shiho snapped, "stop staring." She had a point—a moment after Mai had become aware of his attentions, Yuuichi had started starting at her with such unblinking attention that it seemed that he'd frozen into stone.

This time, Yuuichi didn't argue. He just shook his head and turned so that he was looking at the ground._ Damnit, Yuuichi, _he thought, _sometimes, you're so carpet-bagged. _Mai, as always, pretended not to notice, in spite of the fact that her ears were locked firmly enough onto Yuuichi to make a decent run at a security business.

Mikoto, however, made up her mind to do something she didn't do very often, nor, truth be told, very well. She walked past Mai, past Yuuichi, to Shiho and stared at her pointedly for a moment.

"What?" Shiho said, a little taken aback.

"Why is Shiho so mean to her Ani-ue?" Mikoto asked, reaching her finger up to point at Shiho.

Shiho was positively flabbergasted. She had been doing what she had been doing for many, many years, and nobody had ever come even close to actually questioning her except Yuuichi. And he wasn't really looking for answers. Just an end to the torment.

"N-none of your business!"

"Shiho should be nicer to your Ani-ue," Mikoto said semi-confidently. "Otherwise…"

To say that Shiho didn't want her to continue was an understatement. At this point, it seemed to her that whether the sky fell or stayed where it was, supported by invisible pillars previously thought indestructible rested solely on what Mikoto had to say next, and whether or not she said it at all.

"Otherwise, what will you do when Mai and he—"

Shiho was fast. She was, in fact, very fast for such a small girl, but Mikoto was far, far faster, and she had been used to acting reflexively all her life. Shiho's arm rocketed out to slap some sense into this obviously delusional girl

_has to be delusional Big Brother would never go off with that  
slut  
awful woman_

and before it crossed even half of the distance, Mikoto's own arm reached out and grabbed it, held it there. Something yelped behind her, said something that sounded remarkably like _chie, _but she ignored it.

"Shiho should be happy to have your Ani-ue around at all. And Shiho should want your Ani-ue to smile, not be sad."

Shiho was ready to do a million things at this point. She was ready to scream, to cry, to fight; to deny everything Mikoto had said out loud and in her head. She was ready to duel Mai to the death over her, _HER, _big brother! HERS! _Mine! He takes care of me and I take care of him. She does NOTHING. Just sings him stupid fucking songs in the middle of the night. _If Mai had known that Shiho knew about this…but she didn't. Her face twisted into a horrible mask of rage and hurt, and she prepared her own defense. Something. Anything.

_What, though?  
You don't know a thing about this girl. About either of them._

"You don't know _anything_!"

_You act so cruelly sometimes. Why?_

"Why are you acting so…why are you...being so cruel?"

_Are you just afraid?_

"Let me go! What the hell are you afraid of?"

_Why doesn't Mai fucking stand up for _herself?

"Why…"

She felt her legs weaken, all of the energy in her simply fade to black. In another moment, maybe she would have collapsed. Maybe.

Instead, she heard a small, electronic _click-beep _from behind Mai, who whirled around, to find Chie standing there, lucid, with a shit-eating grin on her face, her camera-phone taking in everything that was going on.

Mai was dumbstruck. Completely. "Chi…e…?" was about all she could get out. Yuuichi doubted he could have gotten much more out of his own suddenly-busted trap. Aoi was fairly well latched onto the girl, who shrugged impishly. "It was a good opportunity." **(A/N: Don't believe me? See Author's notes at the end of the passage to see how a psychology class can come in handy when writing a book –Veg)**

"You were…"

She shrugged. "Had trouble focusing after that"  
_fire gouts from the window  
people die without knowing what killed them utter agony_  
"…thing. Happened. I'm really not quite sure what I missed, but I knew I didn't want to miss this." She gave Mai a wink that said, _you owe me._ Mai missed it.

"Chi…e?"

Chie shrugged. "Honestly. Some people." She turned to Aoi. "You okay there, girl?"

For a moment, Aoi could only gape along with Mikoto and the rest. Then the moment passed, and construction began on the largest grin in Goza's colorful history, right here on the scenic face of Aoi Senou. She let it expand for a moment, and then threw herself at Chie, who took the brunt of the girl with a _woof! _grinning as she did. "No, Aoi!" she screamed in mock-embarassment. "I'm not that kind of girl! You have to ask me out to dinner first!"

And then, to everybody's complete shock, even hers, Aoi planted a great big kiss straight on Chie's mouth. Who, once again, took it with a noise, though it wasn't a woof. It certainly wasn't terribly romantic, though, either. It lasted for a solid five seconds, during which nobody moved at all; the exception to this being, of course, Chie, who allowed the kiss to become a little bit more than a pop on the mouth. A little.

Finally, Chie broke it and laughed. "I told you, I'm not that kind of girl, you little hoochie!" She took the moment to grab Aoi by the sides—her weak spot—and drop the girl to her knees, effectively proving that using your Powers for Evil was really quite fun sometimes. She went to her knees after her, and as she did, she looked up at Mai. She had to practically shout over Aoi's screams of laughter and torment, but she managed to get the point across.

"Where are Akane and Kazuya? Haven't they finished screwing yet? I know I, for one, am ready for some of the world's greatest _KA-RA-OKE!_"

Normally, this would have affected Mai. Clearly, she hadn't recovered from her own mild shock yet:

"Chi…e?"

* * *

Here is our little footnote. 

True catatonia is remarkably hard to come by, and is usually a result of immense stress on an already unbalanced mind. I gotta say, Chie isn't really terribly unbalanced, at all. I think that seeing a bunch of people die like that might stun her, put her into some shock, but that this would be as much a defense mechanism as anything. Like throwing your arms over your head to protect yourself; you're temporarily more or less immobile on your top half, but you're safe. Just so, if somebody seems temporarily catatonic, it may just be a temporary thing while the brain works to block out what it has just witnessed; P implies Q and not-Q implies not-P, so QED.


	13. 11: My Letter 3

Author's notes

This is essentially a one-shot chapter, in fulfillment of my promise to make good on the Shizuru/Natsuki situation that I've been avoiding. I'll fill in the rest of this chapter in the next chapter. For now, enjoy!

In this chapter, Shizuru refers to Natsuki as "Miss Kuga" several times. Take this as the English translation of the formal "Kuga-san," rather than a stern mother or an amused old woman at your church. Er, her church.

No, yours.

* * *

_We started following a certain description / we started simple and fair / once again / before there wasn't any need for an answer / things were much different then_

_Now you question who I am / now there's nothing left to hide_

_So here it goes._

* * *

Chapter 11

My Letter #3

Reflecting on it later, Natsuki Kuga judged the walk back to the van to be among the longest point-one-six miles of her life. Time flies when you're having fun, but that doesn't mean it can't slow to a crawl, too. Really, Natsuki had always merely judged that time tended to pass more quickly when one wasn't paying attention to it; subsequently, life moved very slowly for that particular girl.

Natsuki and Shizuru ascended the stairs, walking past Shizuru's former captor as Natsuki did her damnedest to avoid looking him in the eye; he didn't try hard to discourage her, either, having locked onto what may have been the most fascinating dust bunny on the face of the planet as they walked past him. They went through the kitchen, and out the door into the hallway. The shotgun was, indeed, halfway under the sofa, and as Shizuru started to look towards the staircase which led to the second floor, Natsuki took her hand gently, squeezed it, shook her head. Shizuru nodded.

As they moved past this, Natsuki took a look at where she'd shot Nayo; he was still on the staircase, halfway-slumped and halfway plastered to it, slick and a little bit crusty with his own rapidly-drying blood. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that he was dead. The axe he had been wielding had flown out of his hands when she shot him and lodged itself in the wall above the staircase; only the hilt was visible to Natsuki.

Natsuki turned her head away from it and kept walking.

They walked past the shattered window, and Shizuru said, with a little grin on her face, "Did you do that, Miss Kuga?"

Natsuki's eyes widened a little; a sign of her shock at Shizuru's sudden use of relatively formal language. She wondered briefly if this was what Shizuru was like when she was angry, and nodded in reply to the question. "Yeah."

"Clever."

They kept walking. Out the door, which had been thrown open  
_in a panic fleeing for his life before i kill him_  
by somebody, probably after Natsuki had entered. There were large, though barely visible, footprints on the brown, crunchy grass, and, near the edge of the property, a foot-sized divot and a section of flattened grass that was roughly the size of a man. Natsuki took it in automatically, and as Shizuru let go of her hand, she wished briefly and very, very privately that she couldn't.

The grass was very dry that day.

They walked down the stairs together, onto the lawn. The grass _crunched _under their feet—_How did I move so silently before? _Natsuki wondered, and then stopped moving, suddenly overcome in a kind of dazed curiosity.

Very, very carefully, she rose up so that she was on the balls of her feet. She lifted her left foot, and slid it down at an angle as close as she could manage to the angle the grass was at. It slid through with barely a whisper.

She had done it completely automatically before. Shizuru stopped as well, and that horrible smile was back. "Marveling at your own ability, Miss Kuga?"

"No," Natsuki said quietly. "I'm not."

_What the hell is your problem, Natsuki? You've killed people before; this was nothing new. Hell, you've killed them more viciously than this, too. An icicle in the throat isn't a fun way to go out; it's a hell of a lot worse than_

corner of his head explodes backwards the stairs behind him stained with things thicker than blood

_being shot in the head with a forty-five. _

"Miss Kuga?" Shizuru gently pried. "Don't you think we should be getting back?"

"Don't call me that." Natsuki was staring at the ground, her hands clutched together in fists tight enough to crush a rock.

"Excuse me?" Shizuru's voice was more than a little bit dangerous. So was the lady who possessed it, but she kept that to herself.

"I said, don't call me that. I just killed somebody for you, so don't call me that."

"Having a resurgence of humanity, Natsuki?" There was no trace of mockery in her voice, but Natsuki felt as though she heard it anyway. She didn't care.

"_Yes!_" Her voice started to shake. "Yes I _am_, dammit. I can't get the image of that man out of my head." She took a breath. "I can't reconcile the me that's standing here with the me that walked into that house and shot a man, and broke another man's arm and barely batted an eyelash from the effort, alright? Is _that _what you want to hear?"

"I think it is," Shizuru whispered.

Looking far, far into the future, Natsuki would someday, privately muse that it took only four little words to completely, utterly alter the course of her life. Even if it was far _ipso-facto. _ At the moment, those four little words simply rammed into her, hammering her chest, her throat, her head, her stomach, each one of them stinging in it's own way.

"_Fuck_ you!" Natsuki shouted, less furious than bitter at Shizuru's sudden hefty dose of hypocrisy. "_Fuck _you! You can't even _talk _about humanity! You've killed more people than I have! You just…just…" she trailed off, took a step back, losing her thread as quickly as she'd gained it.

"Fuck me," Shizuru finished. "I'm aware. Am I being cruel, Miss Kuga?"

"Yes," Natsuki whispered. The newfound physical distance between them from her newer, lower vantage point seemed suddenly amplified. "Wh…" her throat locked up, and it took a moment for it to clear. "Why are you…why are you rubbing this…"  
_in my face why are you rubbing the people i killed in my face_

"Haven't you been cruel to me for a long time now?"

"I…" Natsuki understood about a second before she said it. _She doesn't care about the deaths. Not really. That's not even kind of what this is about._

_This is about the question. She's being cruel because she's angry at me for _

"Haven't you been avoiding my question? Haven't you been, not accepting or rejecting my feelings for you, nor even ignoring them, but merely…postponing them? At every chance you get? 'I don't know yet', you say. 'I can't trust you yet.'" As she said this last one, her voice became something indefinably horrible for a moment. "I don't know what you want from me. I don't know what I can do to make you trust me. Tell me, Natsuki. Do you need _me _to kill somebody for _you_? Is that it? Will violence be what will make you trust me? Or something else? _Tell me._"

_She rampaged over first district instead of me  
and she doesn't understand.  
She killed  
me  
many people  
and she doesn't understand.  
So tell her, Natsuki. _

Natsuki tested her legs. They didn't work particularly well. She tested her voice. It caught in her throat a little.

Good enough.

"You don't understand at all."

"_I _don't understand? _Me?_" Shizuru laughed again, as horrible as her smile had been a moment before. "You, who can't get over eighty small, _indescribably _minuscule deaths at my hands half a year ago? You, who not ten minutes ago shot a man? Did you think anything of that, Natsuki, when you did it? Anything at all?"

Natsuki took another step back. _She doesn't…_

_she_

"You don't understand." It came out a lot weaker than she'd intended.

"Then explain it to me, Miss Kuga."

"I told you not to call me that."

Silence between them for a moment. Natsuki tested her legs again, and this time, she found she could use them. "You killed people, but some of those people were my friends, and…and one of them was me. I don't want you to talk to me about killing people. Not after you…" she trailed off.

Shizuru looked away. "I told you I was sorry about that."

_She doesn't understand._

_So tell her, Natsuki._

"It's not about _sorry_, Shizuru. It's not about me forgiving you. You want forgiveness? Fine. I forgive you." She scoffed. "Did that make anything better?"

Shizuru couldn't think of anything to say to that, so Natsuki said it for her. "It's not about that at all. It's about _I. don't. know. _It's about seeing you ki-ki…" she took a moment to steady her tongue. "Kill those people, every time I look at you. It's not something I can control, Shizuru. It's just me."

"Then say no," Shizuru murmured. "If that's how it is, then say no to me."

"No," Natsuki said without meaning to. Shizuru looked up at her, and Natsuki, having said it already, was forced to press valiantly onward with that on her back. "I'm not ready to make a decision. Not at all."

"Then say _something._"

"I won't."

"Why not?"

Natsuki took a deep breath. "Because if I said something now, it would be no. If I say something later…I don't know what it will be. If you want to…" _really love me _"know, you'll have to wait." _Please. Wait. _

"How long?"

"I don't know."

"This is cruel, Natsuki."

Natsuki did her best to smile. "I'm sorry, Shizuru. I'm really not trying to be cruel." The attempt was mediocre, at best. "I just…I can't. Not yet."

"You need more time."

"Yes."

Shizuru sighed. "This is where we always end up."

Natsuki frowned. "I guess it is."

They stood in silence, and as if to fill it, Natsuki's head immediately became something of a battlefield, that cynical little voice in the back of her mind using the empty space to challenge her.

_Always where you end up, _it said._ What are you planning on doing, Natsuki? Are you going to make her wait until the end of time? _

_No! _She felt a little strange, defending herself against herself; but she would have felt worse if she hadn't.

_What are you planning, then?  
I just need more time.  
You know that's a lie.  
It's not!  
You don't need any more time. What you need is a hell of a lot more courage.  
I don't need courage to tell Shizuru my feelings. I don't trust her!  
Because you're scared of her. _

Shizuru was staring at Natsuki by this point—the girl had lapsed into complete silence, and was staring straight ahead, face completely blank. This, coincidentally, puther eyes roughly in line with Shizuru's set of weaponry, far more deadly, in many ways, than the Mark-23 that Natsuki had tucked into the holster under her shirt.

_I am not! I'm not afraid of her!  
Then, why don't you trust her? We distrust people we're afraid will hurt us.  
We don't trust strangers, _Natsuki countered, feeling she'd claimed the upper hand.

_And why not? Because they might be perverts or rapists. _Niggle: 1. Natsuki: 0. Really, Natsuki didn't want to admit to anybody, least of all to herself, that she was really, genuinely afraid of Shizuru. She was.

_What can I do, though? I can't…I just can't…not yet.  
The current only changes when we decide it should change. This river is _yours_. Change it whenever you want to. _

For a moment, Natsuki wanted to shout back at the voice. To go on the offensive, to accuse _it _of something, _anything._ She wasn't used to this. She didn't know how to deal with it.

_Then do something about it. It's your river. Do whatever you want with it._

"Natsuki?" Shizuru had dropped the icy little edge beneath her tone, and she sounded genuinely concerned at this point—any happiness she might have experienced at Natsuki's apparent point of focus, or unfocus, as the case may be—had faded into worry when she had moved them and just Natsuki kept right on staring.

_Your river._

Natsuki looked up at Shizuru and smiled half-heartedly as though nothing had happened. "I guess we really do end up here every time."

_Your river._

Shizuru nodded, a little puzzled.

_You change the current.  
You change it.  
You…_

_You can change the fucking current whenever you want to._

Natsuki caught Shizuru's gaze, as gently as she could; it wasn't hard to do, in any event, as she'd done it often enough, but this time…

She took a step forward, and this time, it was Shizuru's turn to be a little frightened. The taller girl's feet grew roots all of a sudden, started drawing nutrition from the ground, and Shizuru wanted no part of anything else at that point.

_Just reach out your hands._

She did. She reached for Shizuru, who, for a moment, didn't know what to do.

Then she reached back.

_When I didn't trust anybody, you made me trust you.  
When I didn't know where to go, you pointed there.  
You helped me. Every time._

Natsuki pulled Shizuru into a hug; tight, firm, warm, and after a moment, she whispered, "Thank you."

Natsuki could have sworn she heard Shizuru sniffing next to her ear, but that could have just as easily been the sound of the waves of the river, lapping up on the shore as it changed directions.

After a while, Shizuru pulled back. It could have been minutes as easily as it could have been hours in Natsuki's mind, which had lost most of its sense of time in a flurry of relief; the kind of relief that a man working overtime at a grueling job experiences after his shift finally ends.

Natsuki was ready to go now. She felt better. She felt _good_.

Shizuru, however, was not. She was looking straight-on at Natsuki, and she had the kind of look in her eye…the eye that was moving closer, nervously but steadily.

Her immediate response was, _oh, shit. _It was the kind of response you got from months of conditioning. The kind of reaction that would make a man run from what he, in an instant of what could have as easily been infatuation as love, perceived to be the love of his life because he was already married. A flash of sensibility, but at the same time, cowardice. Whether it was for the best was down to anybody's opinion who wanted to speak on it.

But that meant that Natsuki had hers, too.

_I'm not ready yet, Shizuru. I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready.  
But I think, this once, I can do something I'm afraid to do. _

The way some tell it, dating canon states that a man should move ninety percent of the way in for a kiss, allowing the woman enough space to reject him comfortably, or accept him without much effort. It was a formula that worked fairly well for many males, worked poorly for others, notably those whose dental hygiene is less than spectacular.

This instance, however; this location, this couple, this time frame, was utterly unique in the world. Maybe that was the explanation for the pissing on of the canon. Maybe it was that there were no males involved.

Or maybe it was because Natsuki Kuga would not be only ten percent. Ever. She leaned in at least fifty percent, and captured Shizuru's mouth, moving slowly, shaking slightly, with her own, also shaking.

They kissed. Their lips pressed against each other, one pair warm and moist, the other dry. Their respiration virtually ceased. Natsuki's eyes were closed, Shizuru's wide open for a moment as she allowed herself to relax. When her eyes closed, she parted her lips slightly, slid them across Natsuki's as she tilted her head to avoid a bumping of noses.

Natsuki reciprocated her motion, and their kiss became more involved for all of twenty seconds.

The grass was very dry that day. It crunched behind Shizuru, in front of Natsuki, and their kiss ended as Natsuki opened her eyes and drew her gun in the same instinctive motion, bred into her personality by years of  
_violence is this really me when I'm with Shizuru like this_  
paranoia.

She had her weapon trained directly on Minoru Alder, who froze. He had his backpack, and his camouflage was open at the collar, revealing a black sweater.


	14. 12: No leaf clover

Author's notes

Reviewer's corner

Thanks to xSojix, Sei-so, Interstate 405, Unit 667 Ra, m.tsuda, and onenonly for their reviews! (Applause)

As always, thanks to Sumiregawa for all her help getting this story to not suck.

EXTREME apologies for the long update time, and even moreso since this is probably going to turn into the norm. I said earlier that uni is eating my life, and that still holds true. University. Is eating. My freakin' life.

Other notes:

Upon preliminary research, I found that the Japanese legal system is heavily modeled after the American system, a reform which occurred shortly after World War 2. If the brief legal reference herein seems flawed to anybody, please let me know by messaging me.

Finally, it seems to me that this chapter will be largely a transitional chapter, going from point-A in Goza to point-B at the beach. I apologize for making you wait so long just to read a bunch of token transitional and plot development rather than actual plot events.

* * *

_Pay no mind to the distant thunder / new day fills his head with wonder / says "it feels right this time"_

_Then it comes to be / that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel / is just a freight train coming your way_

* * *

Chapter 12

No-leaf clover

As odd as it was, Midori had never seen Natsuki pointing a real gun at somebody before. Sure, everybody had seen her with those shrimpy little ice-guns before, seen her use them to great effect. She had loved those little guns, and somehow, Midori couldn't picture her using anything aside from them as weapons.

Obviously, this was impossible now, but it still struck Midori as odd to see her now, pointing what Midori judged (using her extensive knowledge of modern weaponry) to be a Big Freaking Hand Cannon at a man that she had never seen before. She wasn't particularly shocked—she was, in fact, angry enough that she would have pulled the trigger herself at that moment, given the opportunity, just for the curiosity of seeing something aside from her emotional (and possibly hormonal) balance die a painful death—but it occurred to her in some far-off portion of her brain that there were a dozen or more cops not a block away from where they were. In a country in which a gun of any sort, much less a Big Freaking Hand Cannon, was illegal, this was a problem.

It actually took Midori a moment longer to realize that Natsuki was holding Shizuru in her arms. Somehow it made a smaller impact on her brain than the hand cannon, in spite of the fact that she really knew nothing of whatever dynamic existed between the two of them. (Though, being fair, nobody really knew much of anything about the dynamic between Shizuru and Natsuki. Not even Shizuru and Natsuki.)

It took her a moment longer to realize that the way in which Shizuru was being held was most definitely _not _one of undying friendship. Natsuki's hand—the hand not pointing the gun at the man whose only crime appeared to Midori to be dressing badly—was pressed gently around the back of Shizuru's neck, buried slightly under her hair. Shizuru had both of her hands around Natsuki's lower waist. Both of them were _way _past that "friendly hug" line that separated the middle back from the place that a boyfriend might rest his hand to mark his territory in public.

Somehow, this didn't entirely surprise her. _All things considered, I probably should have caught on that there was something more than a mildly awkward friendship between the two of them, seeing as how she went half-batty as soon as she figured out that Shizuru had disappeared, _Midori thought with a shockingly powerful feeling of detachment.

"Oi," she called out. Her voice was remarkably apathetic, which surprised her. "Are you going to shoot him right out here?"

Natsuki was too busy trying alternative methods of murder—by way of glaring a hole through Minoru's skull—to listen. Shizuru, however, turned her head to face Midori. She didn't say anything; there wasn't really much to say. She did, however, nod, and a moment later, she whispered something in Natsuki's ear.

Natsuki didn't visibly react, but she did lower her weapon after a moment. She didn't relax.

Minoru didn't, either. He was fingering something at his waist. It was like one of those American western-showdown movies, Midori thought.

"Why did you kidnap Shizuru?" Natsuki said, her voice loud enough to be imposing. Her gun was at her hip, loosely hanging near her holster. Shizuru shook her head, a little frustration showing through, but Minoru answered anyway.

"I had nothing to do with that," he said, his voice equally imposing. "I was trying to keep that girl safe."

"Safe? She was kidnapped by a bunch of cornpokes with shotguns! Are you trying to tell me that…"

Shizuru shook her head and whispered something else in Natsuki's ear. Natsuki blinked once, twice, three times, and then shook her head.

"So then what are you doing with the stuff in that backpack? Or are you going to tell me that they're just 'tools' as well?"

Midori had never seen Natsuki posture so much, so visibly defensive.

But then again, she had also never seen her playing grab-ass with another woman, so she supposed she shouldn't allow it to take her too far off-guard.

Minoru sighed. "No, they're not tools. If you'll put your gun up, I think that we can talk this out without anybody else getting shot."

_Anybody _else_? Was somebody shot? _

Midori's brain, sharper than most but still a little too clogged with her own thoughts to be really attentive, struggled for a moment to cope with the flood of information that refused to organize itself fully in her head. What she managed to put into place looked like an outline, albeit a short one:

_Point 1: Natsuki recently traveled back to the cabin, far out of her way, to retrieve an extremely large gun, stating that Shizuru had been kidnapped. _

_Point 2: Natsuki is holding a large, portable howitzer in her hand. Presumably, the same one she retrieved. _

_Point 3: Natsuki went fairly well out of her head, considering that she's normally an even person, when Shizuru's safety came into question._

_Point 4: Natsuki is currently pointing the portable howitzer at a man that I've never seen before, while holding Shizuru. _

_Logical conclusion…_

For a second, Midori refused to believe the obvious conclusion. _Did Natsuki actually…I thought the gun was just for…Who did Natsuki shoot?_ she thought. Natsuki, however, reacted a little more violently; she raised her weapon immediately, trained it on his head again.

"Who said I shot anybody?" she said very, very calmly.

If Minoru hadn't frozen so completely, Midori was sure that he would have been cursing himself pretty hard, judging by the look on his face. That neat little outline that she had made in her head not a moment before went all to shit.

That look on his face was the look of a man who had just been butchered on a witness stand at his own trial. A man who had tried to bluff his way out of the shit-hole and inadvertently confessed to his own crime in the process.

Between Shizuru and Natsuki, Shizuru was by and far the superior in cleverness and wit, and general school-learning. But with regards to things that you couldn't learn without a gun in your hand and several people trying very hard to kill you, Natsuki surpassed Shizuru easily. Shizuru tried to tell Natsuki something, but Natsuki shook her head angrily. "This is the sniper, Shizuru. He was watching the whole time."

Shizuru's eyes widened in comprehension, and then narrowed again. She let go of Natsuki, (_Finally, _Midori thought) and turned to face him straight.

"You killed the men in the attic?" she asked. Her voice was clear and calm, which surprised Midori, who had expected her to be angrier, simply judging by her reaction.

Minoru nodded slowly, his face confused but mildly frightened, as though somebody had threatened to beat him for taking the bus home when it was raining out. "I did."

"Why?"

"I was paid to," Minoru said as though it was obvious; a display of insolence which, Natsuki thought, was more than a little bit out of place. "I was paid to…" he took a breath. "I was paid to observe you. To watch you. The same person who paid me to do that paid me to bail you out of the house."

"Oh, you did a _wonderful _job at that," Natsuki said angrily.

"That wasn't my fault." Minoru seemed angrier than he should have.

"And why not?"

_Because the bastard is a motherfucking lunatic. _"Because my…my employer decided that it would be a great idea to bullet through me. There's no accounting for taste. I killed one of his men and had to run."

"And yet, here you are."

"And yet, here I am. Are you going to kill me?"

"I just might." Natsuki's grip on the gun tightened a little.

Reito's voice came from behind Midori, startling the hell out of her. It was a good thing that she wasn't the one holding the gun. "No, you're not." In spite of his willingness to yield to Midori's overabundance of anger before, to back down, his voice was utterly firm. It left no room for argument, none at all. It wasn't a voice that suggested an excess of ego…simply a lack of doubt. An abundance of certainty.

"Put your gun down, Natsuki," Reito said with that voice. "And come

_towards the front of the class to read us the introductory paragraph of your dissertation, miss Sugiura, if you're so certain of its validity." _

Midori's eyes widened and she spun, rounding on Reito, for an instant expecting to see a fairly well-aged fiftysomething wearing a rather abused old sport coat and a perpetually-inquisitional expression rather than a handsome nineteen year old boy with a serious expression that suggested an overall serenity about him.

For a moment, maybe she did.

Then there was just Reito Kanzaki.

"Butt out, Kanzaki," Natsuki spat back. "This isn't your business."

Minoru's expression suggested that he kind of hoped that she would listen to him.

"If you kill him here, then how do you plan on finding out why Shizuru was kidnapped?"

Natsuki said nothing, knowing he was right but not wanting to, at least immediately, concede.

"This is still none of your business."

"If you want," Reito said, his voice loosening a little. "But put your gun away." A little.

Minoru said nothing, for fear of angering her index finger another quarter-inch.

"Natsuki," Shizuru said. "Now."

Natsuki sighed and lowered her gun.

"Put it up," Minoru called hopefully. Natsuki shot him a look, and he added, "Please?"

She shook her head angrily and turned away, frustrated. Shizuru said, "Mister Alder, would you be kind enough to join us at our cabin? I think there are several matters that I would like to discuss with you."

Something played on Minoru's face—revulsion? only minus the illness—and he nodded. "Yeah, okay."

"Thank you. You can come down now, Akira."

As if from nowhere at all, Akira dropped from some perch above them all onto the ground behind Minoru. In another moment, she had dropped Minoru, numbing his arms and one leg by pinching his nerves, and had removed his weapons.

"Thank you very much," Shizuru smiled at her. "Reito, would you please carry him to the van?"

Reito looked less fazed than he probably should have, and responded simply by nodding seriously. He seemed to have caught onto the seriousness of the situation remarkably quickly, and while he was, admittedly, frightened all to hell by the callus display of—very _large_—weaponry, he had remained fairly resolute throughout. He threw a small grin at Midori as he passed her, on his way to pick up a weakened, violently cursing Minoru Alder, and she shook her head.

She kept shaking it until she saw Reito again, and not a man three times his age with a temperament far closer to his than she would have easily admitted.

* * *

Akane Higurashi wasn't anybody's first call in a crisis. Even Kazuya, the man she loved, the man who loved her, her fairy-tale knight in a shining high school uniform, knew and accepted that. If he had a small issue that he needed to deal with, he talked to her. If he had an emotional problem—fairly rare in a fairly stable, uneventful life (setting aside his post-death experience half a year previously, an event which had not come anywhere near fazing him as it had some of the others) such as his—he could usually turn to Akane, provided it didn't really concern her. (He didn't know what he would do if he had a death in the family, in all honesty; the subject of death was completely off-limits with Akane of late). If it was something beyond typical human psychological issues, though; something to do with real danger, that affected real people, that was something different. In short, if the shit was really honestly moving towards the fan, or maybe had splattered all over the place already, and was in dire need of cleanup he had to go elsewhere.

That wasn't to say that Akane didn't try her best. She did. She worked as hard as she could on any challenge that faced her, and for the most part, she conquered them fairly well with regard to mundane things; part-time jobs, school, even relationships. In all these things, Akane presented a levelheaded, eager face. It was one thing that he loved about her; one of the many.

But since that thing had happened to him, something had clicked off in her head. That thing that allowed her to deal with danger or death in any sort of rational way, and if there was one area in which Kazuya and Akane were not just different, but on opposite ends of a spectrum, it was this one. She was simply unable to deal with the prospect of death. Anybody's death, really; but his especially. She had terrible, sometimes debilitating nightmares, even now, about what could not have been more than a ten minute experience in her life. On many of the nights that they had spent together, she had awoken just so; screaming and crying out for Kazuya. Something had been vaguely familiar to him about the way she screamed, but he couldn't put his finger on it; a memory, just a fragment, that evaporated every time he came near it.

Kazuya was fairly even with regards to death and things generally so freakishly out of the ordinary that it would send most people screaming in the other direction.

He was also walking ahead of Akane that day, her hand clasped firmly in his, trying to get back to the main drag to find a toilet so that he could relieve himself of the soda he'd slugged down earlier.

Much later, looking back on it all, he was very, very grateful to that soda for working its way through to his bladder so quickly.

As they approached the main drag, Akane said, "Do you smell something funny, Kazu?"

Kazuya sniffed, smelled something a little off himself. A little bit like what it had smelled like in the kitchen of _Linden Baum. _He couldn't put his finger on it.

He rounded the corner of a building—some old brick-and-mortar store, practically deserted on a day like today—and stopped, immediately, as he saw the now-thin mob of people around what he observed to be a burnt-out storefront. They were no more than fifty yards away from it.

_Akane_ was his first and only thought, and, as if it were a set of instructions coded into a secret message, he read it and immediately turned and said, "Don't move, Akane."

It was cause for a momentary swell of pride in his belly that she stopped immediately, so trusting was she in his judgment. "What is it?"

"It's…"  
_Lie or truth?_  
Kazuya was a simple sort of man. Things with him tended to boil down to what he regarded to be their basic elements; white and black, right and wrong, love and indifference. You loved somebody or you didn't. There was no middle ground for "Well, I'd like to love you but that thing you do with your rabid mechanical dog really freaks me out," in his mind. It was a good thing and a bad thing, usually in alternating periods, but it was the way he was.  
_Truth. Always. _

"There's a storefront out there, and," he peered into the thinning crowd—by now, composed of only the older residents, the now empty-nested ex-stay-at-homes, and the town gossips were left staring at the firemen, the ambulances, which were now tagging the last of the ex-shoppers that hadn't made it out of the store—and saw what he was afraid of: Corpses. Several of them. _Burning meat, _he thought._ That's what I smelled. _"It looks like there was an explosion. And it looks like some people died. They're—" Akane gave a small gasp, but held her composure, "getting rid of the people that died now. Can we just wait here a minute until they're done?"

In a small, small voice, Akane said, "Don't you have to…you know." It was pretty apparent that it took a lot of courage for her to say that, to suggest that they go out anyway so that he could find a place to pee.

He turned around, walked back behind the building, and grinned. "I can hold it for a few more minutes, I think. Lets just wait here, okay?"

She nodded, and a sort of silent communication passed between them.

_Thank you, _Akane said, _for understanding, and not thinking worse of me for it._

_There's nothing to thank me for, _Kazuya replied. _You are you, and you are how you are; that's why I can be the best that I am. _

"I love you," Akane whispered, and Kazuya smiled as she pressed herself into him, suddenly shaking a little bit. He noticed she pressed her nose into the fabric of his shirt a little harder than was normal. _Blocking out the smell._

"I love you," he echoed, and held her there.

Maybe Kazuya wasn't as stable as he thought he was. Maybe he was not possessed of a sense of sensibility, but of devotion. This occurred to him later, as did many other things in his life.

This occurred to him because of what he thought as he held Akane to him, shielding her from the fire as he had attempted to shield her from that monster before. He knew that if it came right down to it, and she had to fight for him again using some archaic power that he could never possess, she would. And he knew that he would do the same for her. And this is what he thought:

_This_, he thought, _this here in my arms is something worth dying twice for. _

He didn't notice the shadow, but the shadow certainly noticed him.

* * *

Shiho saw the pair first. Of all of them, she was the least emotionally involved in Chie's sudden recovery, and subsequently, she was the most attentive to her surroundings. She could understand why the rest of them were so buffalo-eyed about the whole thing, but she couldn't bring herself to feel the same way.

She was too…too angry.  
_Yes, angry. That's the word._  
Angry at her  
_bastard_  
'Big Brother.'  
_for being happy_  
For ignoring her.

Chie and Aoi looked like a pair of lovers at that point; Aoi had Chie's hand clutched tightly in her own, and had taken to questioning Chie intently about what she remembered and what she didn't, in the kind of carefully reckless, quizzical manner that Chie herself had refined to an art form, albeit an abstract one. In between dodging barrages of deadly, hollow-point, explosive-tipped questions, Chie had just enough time to feel a little proud of her "student."

Shiho didn't see Kazuya and Akane immediately, nor did she see the shadow hanging over their heads as soon as it became apparent. She wasn't focusing on a pair of pseudo-familiar figures in what would have been the background of a canvas rendition of the rather gruesome scene; rather, she was focusing on Mai and Yuuichi, lost in their own little world, a world which they seemed to define solely by their shock and the slowly-decreasing distance between the two of them.

She wondered, somewhere in the very back of her head, if they were even aware that they were inching towards each other.

In the front of her mind, she was fully aware that she was not going to allow it. Their hands were, almost subtly, moving towards each other, attracted almost naturally, like hair to a balloon.

As soon as she made this comparison, she retracted it. _Like it's a law of nature of something. _

She noticed Akane when it occurred to her, out of nowhere, that not even a year ago, she was making that comparison in reference to Yuuichi and herself. That it was the two of them that could be defined as _only natural_, as _so good together_. It was behind their backs, of course, and by _her _classmates, not his, but that didn't bother her. Not at all.

Now she couldn't even try to make the comparison. It didn't feel right anymore. That was when she turned away from the two of them and saw Akane and Kazuya.

Saw Akane and Kazuya being watched by a man in a black sweater and ski mask, his head and the top of his shoulders hanging off of a low rooftop, observing. Neither big nor small, neither imposing nor unobtrusive. Simply a man—the shoulders were broad enough to suggest that if the figure was indeed a woman, she was still doing her a favor referring to her as the opposite—but not simply a man, all at once.

Maybe if it was just a man leaning his head out the window, Shiho wouldn't have paid it any mind. Maybe the man could have merely had a good view of Akane's cleavage, modest as it may be. Maybe he could have been looking to see if he could see the spectacle at the little strip mall. Maybe he could have just woken up; not a morning person, so to speak.

But it wasn't just a man leaning out a window. It was a man leaning out a window with something in his hand. Shiho squinted to see what it was; long and black, with a long, parallel protrusion on the top…and a trigger...

_GUN._

Shiho screamed, and the man's head whipped around to face her.

The man's eyes were ugly. Spiteful. Bitter. Even at a distance, Shiho could see these things, as his eyes locked directly onto hers.

For one solid second, she had the overwhelming feeling that she was going to die.

_raises his gun and takes aim its like a firing squad out here theres nowhere to hide  
cant run  
somebody tells him to fire  
squeezes the trigger and  
cant run  
like a law of nature those stuck in the open shall be  
cant run  
torn asunder no place to bury  
cant run  
my head _

"Shiho!" Yuuichi's voice. Yuuichi's hand on her shoulder. Yuuichi's hand is warm. It squeezes tight enough to let her know he's  
_in pain he grits his teeth and bears the pain until he cant bear it anymore  
TOKIHA_

there.

She feels the instinct rise in her to move towards it. She feels another, something newer, fresher, tell her to recoil. She does neither, simply stands there. Behind her, Mai looks annoyed but concerned, a set of emotions difficult to pull off simultaneously. Annoyed because of the position she and Yuuichi were in.

Concerned because maybe, just maybe, she saw it too. Maybe her head whipped around at just the right time to see a gun barrel and a black-covered head vanish into a window just above Akane and Kazuya, caught in some cutsey position.

And maybe she took in more of what she saw than she thought she had.

Or maybe not.

Akane and Kazuya made their way back towards the group, looking hideously embarrassed; Akane was positively livid, convinced that it was the sight of herself and Kazuya, holding each other and about to…do things that would probably make a seventh-grader scream if she saw them, right?

Three months ago she would have believed that. Of late her sensibilities had become slightly less easily offended.

_Soon, she promised him. Some day, but someday soon._

The look on her face, though…Akane, underneath all her horrified lividness, wanted desperately to believe that she was just shocked. She looked like she'd seen a murderer.

Mai set about convincing Akane that no, Shiho had just thought that she had seen something, that must have been it. Or maybe, privately confided, expressed in girlfriend code, she had been wanting not to see something else, you know how it is, yes I know how it is, but no, you didn't embarrass her don't worry about it, oh thank goodness.

Yuuichi's hand was still on Shiho's shoulder. Shiho found herself paralyzed, unable to move for fear that if she did, the hand would leave. Vanish. Mai looked angry. Angry at her, of course. Mai must hate her. She would never believe that there was a man with a gun watching Akane and Kazuya a floor above them. She would think it was all some rendition of Shiho's mind, wouldn't she?

And if she was such a  
_bitch_  
conniving bastard, wouldn't Yuuichi believe the same thing?

"What did you see?" Yuuichi said quietly, dropping into a squat to bring himself down to her height. "Did you see something that scared you?"  
_such a_  
Shiho, very slowly, cautiously, like a raccoon caught stealing from a compost heap, turned around to face him. Carefully. _Please god, don't let this hand move._

It didn't.

She nodded to him mutely. "I can't tell you here."

"Why not?"

She shook her head, meeting his eyes. _No, _her eyes said. _Don't ask me again._

He nodded. "You can tell me later."  
_bitch_

"Thank you," she whispered, feeling her knees wobble a little; weakened by horror. At what she'd seen, of course; and at what Yuuichi had done.

He had been kind to her. Even though.

Even though.

* * *

A few minutes later, the van pulled up next to them, bearing Natsuki, Shizuru, Midori, and Reito. None of them had entirely pleasant, normal expressions on their faces. None of them looked terribly happy to be on vacation.

Mai thought, _This was supposed to be a fun thing; a way to get away, _with more than a little regret.

More than a lot, even.

There was an odd package wrapped entirely in black cloth in the trunk, and Natsuki warned everybody, on penalty of death, away from it. Her voice carried an odd tone to it when she spoke. A tone that Mai hadn't heard in  
_stay away from Fuuka Academy_  
a long time.

The drive back to the beach was long and silent.


	15. 13: I am

Author's Notes:

Reviewer's corner:

Thanks to all those who reviewed! xSojix, Interstate 405, and m.tsuda! You get a cookie. Hey, to all those of you who enjoy my fic out there, don't forget to drop me a review and let me know! If you don't like it, drop me a review and tell me, too. Thanks, all!

With regard to "reducing" dislocated joints:

Normally, when somebody dislocates a joint, it's best not to attempt to force it back into place, a practice commonly known in the medical community and among its constituents as "reducing." With a wrist, this is doubly true, as the wrist is an extremely delicate joint, meaning that even if a reduction is attempted, it may only make it worse.

However, in cases where it's obvious circulation has been cut off to the hand, and no medical attention is available, it may be prudent to, very delicately, at least attempt to unpinch the vein that's been blocked.

(End medical spiel)

* * *

_I am your spoken truth / I am the light in you / I'm here to make you shine / in everything you do / I am your lighted way / and I'm your darkest day / I'm here to help you see / you can rely on me _

_Death will come when I'm good and ready_

* * *

Chapter 13

I am / My Letter #4

The man with the raspy voice felt no guilt about Minoru Alder. Perhaps if he'd known the truth about the death of his partner, he would have, but it would not have changed Minoru's fate. Period. His word was his word. It was not befitting for a commander to make exceptions for his subordinates, for any reason. Especially not for a subordinate who had now killed one of his other subordinates.

Yes, he had killed…what was his name again?

The man mused for a moment, came up with nothing.

He had killed his subordinate and then fled. That made him both a coward and an enemy. Charges of cowardice alone were enough to earn him a death sentence.

His desertion, however, did not faze the man in the slightest. Nothing did. He had many more subordinates than merely Minoru, his partner, and the other one. And he had money in any case; oh, how he had money.

He supposed considering the shattered state of his organization, he should hold onto money more tenaciously, not spend it on more subordinates. But this took precedence, he thought, over paying some old men's pensions. If they didn't understand...well, then, perhaps they were cowards, as well.

But the man with the raspy voice was not a coward. Not in any way. He would do it himself if he had to, such was the strength of his conviction.

Not that he would have to, of course. That was what the money was for.

* * *

Minoru had absolutely no idea what that boy, Akira was his name, had done to him, and frankly, he didn't want to know. It was like every last one of his muscles was utterly cramped up, tense, unable to move, and in a sort of dull, thumping agony that reminded him of a few of his worse nights—and mornings—back during the Lazy Years. Small miracle, his neck muscles were mostly lax, which was probably why he was still alive right now. _Lax enough to cuss up a storm earlier. _

Not that this had done him any good. He would have thought that the dumbfuck cornpoke cops not two blocks away would have been alert enough to hear him, or notice the van blazing away at what couldn't have been anywhere near the speed limit. Or at least, that was what he was speculating; it was surprisingly difficult to be a good judge of speed when your view consisted of a dusty linen floor and a lump of black cloth.

What a dignified way for an old-guard sniper such as Minoru Alder to travel. _You deserve it, though; you managed to get yourself caught by a bunch of fucking _kids, _Minoru, _he thought. _Nice job. _ He had even shut up completely as soon as they had thrown the cloth over him. Rolling over.

He had a hard time feeling really bad about this.

_Rolling over keeps you alive. Give it time; you'll get out of this. _He thought this with a confidence born of years of Getting Out of This by simply giving it time.

This would be no different. No different.

No different.

He was just getting settled into biding his time when time decided it was done biding him. The van went over what was quite possibly the largest bump he had ever felt while laying, completely incapacitated, underneath a cloth blanket in the trunk of a van. Nobody said anything, in spite of the fact that they had taken it so fast and so hard that there was no way that the van could be wholly intact, but as he landed, he landed on his wrist. Hard. Pain flared and he heard something _pop_, and he screamed just as the van settled into a stop.

There was a general murmur—really, it was an overarching gasp from all but four of the van's occupants, but the sudden, flaring pain in his wrist had a parallel effect of stuffing cotton balls into his ears—from in front of him, and he dug his teeth into his lower lip as he rolled off of the wrist, his other hand flying up to clutch it protectively.

His other hand…

Not that Minoru particularly cared, but the sudden motion had broken that massive cramp, like a button to restart a machine. Only this button was his wrist and it was _really fucking—  
_Light as the van of the trunk opened, the blanket was practically thrown off of him, and he found himself staring straight into the face of the girl who had lecherously taken a piss in the middle of the night while he observed the sexy snoring party. Orange-red hair, serious face, big, expressive blue eyes which were presently staring at him with a bizarre absence of fear.

In fact, there was an abundance of melancholy at that moment in those eyes._ Oh, look. There is a man hiding under a blanket in the back of our van. How wonderful, this is the perfect addition to this wonderful beach trip. _Complete lack of emotion.

She stared at him for a moment, and others began to gather—a boy with faux-blonde hair in a fairly dorky spike-cut; a short girl in braids, a pretty girl with dark hair in a veryurban _chic _cut, who had her arm unscrupulously and causally draped about a simple-looking sort of girl with long, brown hair.

Standing well behind them, trying to look more nonchalant than a criminal caught walking off with a bag of loot but failing miserably, were his captors.

"Who are you?" the pretty orange-haired girl's tone was as melancholy as her face, and suddenly, Minoru thought, _you poor bastard, _a feeling of deep sympathy that he hadn't felt in years rushing to his head and his heart in an instant. In the next instant, he shoved it back down, helped out by another surge of pain from his wrist.

"My wrist is…I think it's dislocated." His voice was very hoarse considering that he hadn't used it in at least twenty minutes. "I think. I think I need…"

The urban-_chic _girl peered at him through trendy-ish glasses. "Oh-ho," she said, her voice positively _ripe _with a sudden gleeful interest that did not at all hold with the other girl's mood. "Do we have a pervert stowaway here?"

"Nngh," Minoru replied, the pain starting to intensify again as his momentary interest in a close-up encounter with the people he'd been looking at through a scope only a night before vanished.

The braided girl, previously looking almost as morose as the orange-haired one, said with a sudden dose of fascination, "I think he's starting to turn purple."

Behind them, Natsuki was starting to look a little bit sheepish, trying to casually wander off. Midori grabbed her by the shoulder, a shit-eating grin on her face, shaking her head. Silently, she said, _This was your idea. You stick around. _A moment later, she turned her head, and said the same thing to somebody that Minoru couldn't see.

Meanwhile, Minoru was dying of agony and being stared at by a group of teenagers that looked like they wanted to poke him with a stick to see if he'd move.

And they seemed to be taking a fair measure of glee in it, at that. The boy showed a measure of concern on his face, but it wasn't a big one. They all thought he was a fucking _pervert. _A peeping tom.

"Tell us, mister pervert," Glasses said, "Just which one of us were you staring at, exactly?" 

"Mrgh," Minoru said, marveling at his internal lucidity, especially when faced with his outward incoherency and the _NUMBING PAIN IN MY WRIST_. He noticed that the very edges of his vision were starting to turn white, and he tried again. "My wrist," he said, his mouth working slowly, awkwardly, like it had cotton balls in it (it actually came out something like _my rischt_), "is dislocated, and I feel very much as though I am about to die." Minoru was not precisely used to pain—snipers didn't tend to be. As a rule, if you fell under enemy fire, you died or they did. The last time Minoru had heard of a sniper heroically limping home wit a damaged leg was when one of his coworkers in the Sino-Russian conflict had fallen out of a tree. He had weighed about two hundred pounds, and Minoru had thought he'd deserved it.

Glasses only smiled, a bit sadistically. "Maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to stow away in the back of our van, mister pervert."

Minoru was about to shoot a clever retort back at her, something to the effect of _braggh nngh wagh, _but before he could, Midori put her hand on urban-_chic_'s shoulder.

"Chie," Midori said calmly, her voice a bastion of forced gentility—the kind that was obviously fake—"It's okay. He's not a pervert."

Chie raised an eyebrow at Midori, not used to her leadership. Being fair, Midori wasn't fully used to Midori's leadership either, nor would she ever be. That, however, was not something she frequently thought on.

"If that's true," Chie said, being careful but quick, "why was he stowing out in the back of our van?" It was obvious that she was more curious about questioning him for details than she was about preserving her own dignity as she said this.

Midori had the grace to look a little bit sheepish in front of Minoru as her brain went into complete and utter lock-up. "Ah…about that, you see…it's…"

_a complicated, heart-wrenching story, with reasons greater and deeper than the Mariana trench_

"A complicated…"

_that's what you used to be  
cant think can you  
cant do shit  
anything   
_

"and he-heart wrenching story. With…ah…reasons…"

Chie was staring at her like she was trying to wave bye-bye with a third breast. Midori was going red, but not from embarrassment; she felt like she was giving a lecture with a horrible stutter. She just _couldn't. get. the. words. out._

_THINK  
cant think thinking means thinking about  
THINK  
that _

Reito was behind her, and his hand was warm on her shoulder. She didn't move this time, if only for fear of appearing weak in front of the enemy.

"There's a story behind it, but it's too complicated to explain, as our …ah," he frowned, having spoken himself into a corner when he was forced to address Minoru as _something_. He was silent for a moment.

That moment would have, at this point, taken Midori an hour; when it passed, and the word he was looking for came to him, he continued, "guest appears to be passing out. I think it would be prudent to take him inside now, and perhaps give him something for the pain."

From his dignified position whimpering and clutching his wrist, Minoru suggested, humbly, "and if any of you know how to fix a dislocated wrist, I'd be most appreciative."

Midori managed a small grin, and directed it at Minoru. "I think I know somebody who can help you out," she said. Her voice was strained and quiet, as though pressing against a wall that prevented her from passing a certain volume.

Mai and Chie both frowned, and Chie said, "You do?"

Midori shrugged. "I know people who know people."

"Who just happen to be in Goza?" Mai said with a little frown.

_My best friend's a doctor, okay? I learn a thing or two. Step off, _Midori thought, and then wondered why she refused to simply come out and talk about herself to some of her closest friends.

Once again, it was Reito who stepped in to save her. "We'll take care of it. Don't worry about it." His voice was confident, cool, his grin wide and trustworthy.

Nobody bought it. "I think what really concerns me," Chie said, her tone a little hostile, "is why it is that there's a person in the trunk of this van and you didn't tell us about it." It was clear that she was taking this a little personally. There was a fire in her eyes that Mai, at least, had never seen before. Aoi put an arm on Chie's shoulder, and Chie relaxed a little, but not much. This would have been better for Reito and Midori if Aoi didn't have the same disbelief in her eyes that the rest of them did.

_Where the hell did Shizuru and Natsuki go? _Midori glanced around quickly, found that they'd vanished from sight, cursed. _They're probably off somewhere fucking, the goddamn… _

She stopped, unable to fathom the depths to which this train of thought drove her bitterness.

What was worse, it wasn't because they'd ditched out on them at a crucial moment.

It wasn't even that they had ditched out, she presumed, to go fuck somewhere in a bush.

It was that both of them had _found _somebody to fuck in a bush. Somebody that wasn't going to have a heart attack in the middle of the desert. Somebody that

"Um," Minoru said, breaking the stand-off between Chie and Reito, "I'm glad you guys listened to mommy and daddy when they told you not to talk to strangers or let them ride in your trunk, really I am. I'm sure they'd be proud. But, ah, I don't know your name," with his eyes, he indicated either Midori, Reito, or a tree trunk about ten yards back, "but if you _do _have a friend who knows a friend or whatever, I'd be glad to get some on-site medical attention."

_I wonder how pissed Yohko would be at being called all the way out here, _Midori wondered briefly, before Minoru continued, "But unless your friend is a professional orthopediatrician, they won't be able to do much."

At this point, Midori noticed that his hand was starting to turn a little blue.

_He's losing circulation to that hand really quickly; he's going to lose the hand if he's not careful.   
_

_ He might be a bastard, but he might not be, too.   
_

_ But he's still a god damned _person_.   
_

She tried to go towards him, to try and get him out of the van and take him somewhere where she could splint his wrist, but her feet locked up. _You can't do it.   
_

The little voice told her, _just let Reito do it. He can do it better than you can anyway._

Every self-doubt binge has its limit. That limit usually comes when the little voice in the back of your head, the one that tells you, _you can't do it, you can't do it, you can't do it, _says something that violates some tenet that you hold so dear to yourself that it becomes utterly impossible to believe the voice anymore. For Midori Sugiura, that tenet that she valued above all about herself was violated here, now. She was who she was, and _nobody…_nobody…would take away her passion. If she wanted to do something, nobody would do it for her simply because they could and she could not.

_Bam.   
_

For a full five seconds, Midori couldn't see a thing. Her vision dropped out, and the world dropped out from underneath her. But the world wasn't what was falling; she was. This crutch that she'd been leaning on since the Professor's death.

It was the crutch of ambivalence. _If nothing matters to me at all, if I let anything that wants _in _attack my body and my mind, then _his _death doesn't matter either.   
_

She had let things attack both her body and mind. Men had wanted _in, _and she had let them in for a night, as they, convinced that she was drunk on what was actually nothing but orange juice, took her in whatever way they, _actually _drunk, had wanted. Self-doubt knocked on her door, and instead of sneering in its face, she opened the door and took its coat.

_ Fuck you.   
_

Her feet still moved slowly. Her brain was still sluggish.

But she had changed the current. She was Midori Sugiura, and she had done it all by her fucking self.

_Not by yourself. You needed  
_his  
_ help.  
He stands only a bit taller than I do. His hair is  
black  
graying, and he has a kind of constantly  
confident _  
_analytical expression on his face. And he helps me.  
_

_ I don't like Reito like I did the Professor. _At this point, she had no idea whether that was a lie or the truth. It was simply what she thought, and she could trust it for the moment. She also knew that people didn't get over things this fast, and that she wasn't anywhere near out of the woods yet.

_ That's all right.   
_

"My friend is a school nurse," Midori said, digging in the pocket of her vest for her cell phone. "She's probably treated more dislocated wrists than a professional orthowhatever. Give me two seconds." Her voice was still a little strained, but her words were flowing again.

"Midori," Reito murmured, "Are you sure about this?"

"Shut up, Reito," Midori said lightly, and punched in Yohko's number, held the phone to her ear, praying that her friend was somewhere near her phone.

_Ring. _

_ Ring.   
_

_ Ring.   
_

Third ring. Always. _To make sure they mean business.   
_

"Hey," Yohko answered, her voice airy and familiar, even with the slightly metallic tone the phone forced onto it. "Thought you were in Goza."

"I am in Goza," Midori said. "Listen, are you at all sober right now?"

Minoru got an ugly look on his face; it was the look of a man who had the undeniable feeling that he was hopelessly, irrevocably fucked.

"Almost totally," Yohko said without a hint of defensiveness. "It's the break, so I'm sure I'm buzzed from somewhere. Why?"

"I need to know how to reduce a dislocated wrist."

"Who dislocated their wrist?"

"Nobody you know."

"And why, exactly, are you talking to me instead of an emergency dispatcher?"

Midori didn't answer. There was a moment of silence between them. Then, "Are you in trouble, Midori?" Her voice was very serious.

"I'm not sure yet, Yohko. I'm really not. But his hand is starting to turn blue, and I think he's going to lose it if we don't do something."

"And you're not going to call an ambulance."

"I would if I could."

"But you can't."

"But I can't."

Yohko sighed. "I thought you were going to take it easy for a while."

"Me too. Are you going to help me out or not?" 

"The wrist is really delicate, Midori," Yohko said firmly. "You're just as likely to fuck it up even further trying to fix it."

"If we don't do something soon, he's going to lose it. It's pretty bad; I think he pinched a vein."

"You're sure?" Yohko said.

"No," Midori said it as confidently as somebody could be when admitting they didn't know something. 

Another sigh. "Fine. First, have somebody go find a stick and something to make a splint with. Medical tape is best, but anything gentle will work."

Then Midori started dishing out orders, and for a while, anyway, she felt better.

She was still going to fucking kill Natsuki and Shizuru, though.

* * *

Natsuki felt a little bad about ditching out on the group like that, especially when she was supposed to be taking partial responsibility for something, but, in fairness, it wasn't all her fault. 

Shizuru hadn't stopped holding her hand since they'd gotten out of the van. Nobody had noticed, probably because they were all preoccupied with a strange man in their trunk, but the look in Shizuru's eyes said that their inattention most certainly was not the reason she was taking the kind of liberties that she was taking.

The look in Shizuru's eyes said that she was hungry. Natsuki had seen it once before…

_in a dream  
kimono is loose as she leans in   
_

but she couldn't put her finger on it; like she'd blocked it out.

"Are you sure you're okay leaving them like this?" Natsuki asked a little tentatively, testing the figurative mud that she felt she was about to step in, to decide if moving further would drown her or only get her pants a little messy.

Shizuru said nothing; simply led Natsuki on, moving quietly through underbrush and sand towards the cabin.

"Shizuru?"

In reality, Natsuki didn't think that Shizuru would feel at all bad about abandoning the group up there. What she wanted was for Shizuru to speak. About something; anything. Her silence was more frightening than…

_Than when she talks to you about what _she _wants.   
_

They made it around the cabin, out of sight of the van, and Shizuru stopped moving, her head pointed down, her hair obscuring most of her face. Natsuki stopped as well, trying her best to study Shizuru's face. Natsuki felt her body tense up and for a moment, there was utter silence; not even the ocean seemed to want to make noise for her. The stillness only made Natsuki want to shiver. To fill the void.

Then, "Natsuki."

"E…eh?"

"Why did you do that?"

Shizuru looked up, and her face both scared Natsuki and melted her; it was hungry and sad all at once: Hungry by the way her eyes flickered up and down, taking in every inch of her; sad by the way her lip twitched as she did it.

"Shizuru," Natsuki said quietly, and reached out for her with one hand. Her face was sympathetic, kind, and Shizuru let her hunger take her, fueled by the gentleness in Natsuki's face, like a lion was fueled by the gentle aura of its prey.

She took the hand and used it to pull Natsuki to her, and in the next moment, Natsuki felt, for the second time that day, Shizuru's lips on hers. They were warm, moist, and they felt both wonderful and terrible, all at once. _  
_

Natsuki kissed her back, even while she considered whether she wanted to or not. _It was supposed to be 'just this once,' _she thought, a little bemused as she felt Shizuru's tongue press itself onto hers.

Natsuki had no idea what to do with that tongue. She had never really kissed anybody like this before; even their earlier lip-lock had been nothing like this.

She wasn't sure she was comfortable with it.

_It feels wonderful  
But it feels terrible, too_

She wasn't comfortable with it.

_But if you reject her now, _she thought, _with somebody specifically targeting her as they are, can you really keep your eye on her? Can you really… _

Shizuru broke the kiss, and looked Natsuki straight in the eye, and whispered, "I love you."

Shizuru did get overzealous on very rare occasions. Ironically, or perhaps not so much so, all of these occasions seemed to involve Natsuki in some way. Shizuru   
_leans in as I lay there, practically unconscious from the fever ravaging my body.  
_kissed her again. It was  
_the first time I've been sick in years. But I'm still awake enough to remember the feeling of  
_sweet; it felt good, mostly somewhere low in her body. The passion warmed her someplace she hadn't felt warm in for a long time. And yet, something about it, something about

_ her painted lips on mine. It feels…   
_

_ wrong  
sick.   
_

Natsuki felt a wave of revulsion take her, emanating from her lips and coursing down to her stomach. She felt her gorge rise a little.

_If you lead her on and then reject her, she might never  
_forgive you  
_ let you go, even if you want her to.  
But you can't do this yet.  
But she may hate you for it.   
But you can't.   
_

She knew this was true.

But she also knew that she couldn't say no. So she did something she had never done before: She broke the kiss and copped out. "Shizuru," she whispered, "not here."

For a moment, an ugly, dangerous look came over Shizuru's face, and for that same moment Natsuki was suddenly certain that Shizuru was going to strike her.

Then it passed and Shizuru nodded. "You're probably right," she said tautly. "We wouldn't want to be discovered."

Natsuki nodded nervously, feeling—no, knowing—full well that she had just dug herself into a hole that she may not be able to escape, and said, "We should get back to the others." She felt her stomach sink with dread at the prospect of being buried alive in the half-truth she had just told, simply by omission; but something, some small little voice inside of her, told her that there was not a thing she could do about it.

Shizuru nodded, accepting—at a level somewhere near the surface, anyway—Natsuki's need to be subtle about the two of them for the moment.

She still insisted on holding Natsuki's hand on the way back up.

* * *

When Shizuru and Natsuki arrived at the top of the hill again, the first thing they saw was Reito with Minoru mounting him from behind. Natsuki's immediate thought was, _funny, people always kind of suspected that about him, but I never thought he would have revealed it now, of all times. _

A moment later, Reito stood up straight, giving Minoru essentially a piggyback ride. Minoru supported himself with his one good hand, and rested his bad one on Reito's shoulder. There was a fairly well-fashioned splint already lining the back of his hand, made from a very straight stick and some medical tape that somebody had found in the glove compartment of the van. In spite of this, Minoru's face was an ugly mask of pain, for which nobody could blame him.

Chie was still looking skeptical and angry, but Aoi was speaking to her in low tones, and with each word, Chie seemed to calm significantly.

Midori cast a glance at Natsuki and Shizuru as they arrived, less angry than she would have expected. They were, indeed, holding hands, but something about the way the whole thing had turned out without their help seemed to calm her. She would have to tie the two of them up and give them a stern talking-to about running off in the middle of a crisis to have sex later, but as it was…

Reito grinned at her as best he could as he carried Minoru down the small flight of steps to the cabin. He had been the one to unpinch Minoru's vein, in the end; his being the steadiest fingers of all of theirs.

As it was, Midori was sober _and _satisfied with the way things were, for possibly the first time since they had arrived on that beach.

She could deal with the rest later.


	16. 14: Believe

Author's notes:

Back from the long sabbatical! Good to be back, and thanks to all of you kick-ass …ass-kickers…who stuck with me through it. Also, thanks to my editor, Sumi, for kicking ass in her own special way. And editing this fic to make it not suck. And stuff. Also, please notice that Sumiregawa herself has recently written a new piece of fiction. It kicks ass, just like her—go read it when you're done with this; you won't regret it.

Sorry for the length of the chapter and lack of plot continuation. I was really hoping to get a double-release out this week, but life took over, and I only managed to finish this and a chapter of Words, which is presently being edited. I'll have 15 out sometime next week, hopefully with interlude 2 to accompany it.

The vein pinched in this chapter is the Cephalic vein. It stretches from your heart into your shoulder, and then reaches down your arm in two parts, which reunite around your wrist—on the right side of your right arm and the left side of your left arm—and flow into your hand.

Finally, in the course of writing this chapter, I realized I needed to think of the noun for 'simultaneous.' After thinking for a few minutes, I felt something poking at the back of my ass. I reached down, grabbed whatever was poking its little head out of there, and came up with the word "simultaneity," which proceeded to pass spell-check and I kick booty, and I thought you all should know that.

Disclaimers

Firstly, Sumi has employed her mastery of the English Language to do whatever she can to make this chapter something that somebody could read without dying, but in the end, it came down to me to incorporate her suggestions. Therefore, all mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Secondly, I still don't own Mai-HiME.

* * *

_You will never need to recognize yourself / to deceive / to remove all chance of doubt and be received / with your lie / the deception is complete_

_All your belief cannot absolve your sin._

* * *

Chapter 14

Believe

Reito set Minrou, who had become remarkably quiet considering his vulgar state not ten minutes before, down on the hard, grainy wood of the boys' bedroom in their cabin. His actions were smooth and gentle, and Midori, who had followed them, was just a little impressed; Minoru was in relatively good physical shape, but he was also a middle-aged man, and as such had gone just a bit to pot, in the way that all middle-aged men do as their metabolisms unionize, and start demanding shorter hours and better pay. Midori smiled with appreciation as Reito stood up, massaging his back gently as he turned to face her, his small grin mirroring hers.

Their eyes met, and so began the most childishly awkward moment that Midori had experienced since being asked out by a cute, stupid boy during her final year in junior high. It lasted exactly seven seconds, during which Midori kept her eyes locked onto Reito's, wanting desperately to look away but not quite knowing how. His eyes were gentle, sparkling with a sort of _oh, Midori, _humor that she didn't quite appreciate.

The problem, she would later speculate, was that she wanted to thank him, but at the same time, she wanted his egotistical, womanizing face out of hers. The second problem was that he was neither egotistical nor womanizing, and she knew this quite well, and understood that she had made this description of him up on the spot. She did not want to admit this to herself at the moment, because that would feel a lot like letting her defenses down.

_I don't like him like I liked the professor. And he's looking at me like I do._

This bothered Midori a whole hell of a lot less than she wanted to admit, and that bothered a whole hell of a lot more than she could adequately explain to any sort of guidance counselor.

And then the moment passed, and Reito shifted his focus to the wall behind and to the left of Midori's head, his smile becoming a little less genuine, his eyes becoming a little less affectionate. "I'll just wait outside," he said quietly. "If you need anything, just shout."

_He almost seems angry._

_Can you really be surprised at that?_

"I will," Midori nodded, and then said, with as big of a smile as she could force onto her face, "Thanks."

This seemed to lighten his mood a lot. He grinned back, and nodded. "I'll be outside."

Then he was gone, and Minoru was looking at Midori with a kind of resigned apprehension: _Hurry up and shoot me, I don't have all day. _

It almost seemed unnecessary, then, for Midori to say, "This is going to hurt," but she did anyway, her voice manically cheery as she unrolled a length of medical tape that she produced from some pocket that he couldn't see. "A lot." Minoru didn't particularly trust that voice—it was the voice of somebody who enjoyed every bit of their work, a voice that did not fit well on nurses, dentists, or lawyers.

It also did not fit well on somebody about to re-set your dislocated wrist. He was starting to have second thoughts about the whole endeavor—a lot of them, at that; as it was, he couldn't feel his wrist, but it didn't really hurt, either. He wasn't any particular fan of agonizing pain, so he felt at that moment that he would have been more than happy to just live and let live.

Midori's left hand was gripping Minoru's dislocated hand firmly, holding it as though she was about to shake it, and she held his wrist loosely in her right. Apparently, her nurse friend had told her that her best shot at not irrevocably fucking his joint up was to make sure she didn't touch the vein as she did it, which meant she would have to squeeze his wrist back together with one hand. Gently, unless it resisted. Then she was apparently to use all her strength, but do so gently. Always gently. Also, she had told Midori that it was going to hurt a lot. Him, not her.

"Grit your teeth, buddy," she said. "Count of three, okay?"

"Could you wait just a second?" Minoru interrupted, his stomach churning suddenly with anticipation of the pain he was about to endure. _She's going to do it on one anyway. Nurses that enjoy their work always pull shit like that._ "I'd like to get a last glimpse of the world before you—"

Midori's hand clenched, a lot less gently than she'd intended, and the wave of sharp, burning pain that followed didn't so much shoot through Minoru as rip his nerves out, bunch them up, and take a nice big bite out of them. He screamed—a little higher-pitched than Midori would have thought was possible from somebody with a voice as mid-ranged as his—and collapsed, slumped over practically on top of her as his voice cut out without warning. At the same time, his hand clenched up into a tight fist.

Midori felt a pang of shock sweep through her where the panic should have been, and she cursed to hserself. _Oh, shit, _she thought with a remarkable sense of calm._ I must have pinched the vein even worse. _She shouted, "Help me!" and immediately put her hand to his neck, trying to feel for a pulse.

_No, not the neck. Check his wrist. If you really did pinch his nerve, you won't be able to feel his pulse there. _

The door opened almost immediately, and a second later, Reito knelt down next to her, his face calm but his eyes urgent. "What happened to him?"

_He's asking, _what did you do to him? _You fucked up, that's what happened to him._

That little voice in the back of her head. Insecurity. That thing she had just beaten down.  
_You're going to kill him.  
Fuck you._

"I don't know." She shook her head to clear it of that stupid _fucking _insecurity. "I'm not sure. I set his wrist, and he just collapsed."

She gripped his forearm, about a quarter of the way up from his wrist, and dug her finger, a little more powerfully than she'd probably intended, into the area between his tendon and his muscle, feeling a soft, gentle pulse on her fingertip. Immediately, some of her worry dissolved as she began to track his heartbeat as a little slow, but certainly present. She started moving her finger lower, tracking the vein down his wrist, as Reito pulled Minoru's limp form off of her lap; at the base of the forearm, the pulse vanished.

_I pinched the vein. _The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and she looked up at Reito, her eyes wide.

"You pinched the vein?" he asked unnecessarily; she wished he hadn't, but answered him anyway.

"I pinched the vein."

"What now?"

"I have no fucking idea. I must have pinched it with the bone, so we have to loosen it." _Think. Think. THINK. You're not a nurse, but you lived with one for years. _Minoru's hand was starting to turn an ugly shade of blue that made Reito's eyes widen a bit.

Something she had once said to Youko came to mind immediately, but oddly enough, it had nothing to do with nursing or veins or anything: _Sometimes, things just fall into place, but a lot of the time, they fall right on top of something important. Never trust anything to work itself out on its own._

At this, as if almost by instinct, she started rubbing at the vein, at the tendons around it, and the fist his hand had clenched so powerfully into started to loosen, and with it, his tendons.

In spite of her relationship with Youko, it was Reito who spotted first what was going on.

"His hand is starting to turn a little less blue," he said quietly. Midori looked down at his hand and realized that Reito was right.

_It's too tight. His hand is too tight, and it's cutting off the circulation to a vein that's already crowded.  
Things just fall into place, right on top of something._

Midori was by no means a stupid woman. She was, in fact, one of the brightest women in the Archaeology department; she was twenty-four and had been most of the way through graduate school when she was expelled; she was clever and she had a keen ability to observe a puzzle as a series of little pieces, and to see just where they should fall. Her ability to synthesize information from little clues and hints was near-nigh legendary among the other Masters' candidates in the Archaeology department at Tokyo University; it was what made her good at her job. It was what had led her so close to the truth; to the truth at Fuuka Gakuen that had kept Mai alive in the end.

She had also spent many, many nights helping Youko study diagrams of the human anatomy, and had subsequently learned almost as much as her roommate had. She knew fairly well the structure of veins and tendons, bones and nerves.

Maybe, if this worked, she could stop paying Youko back for puking on her one night when she was holding up a diagram of a nerve structure for her to study for a midterm the next day.

Maybe.

"Reito," she said urgently, "you know that tendon on your forearm that moves whenever you move your hand?" she pointed it out on her own arm, just next to the vein she'd pinched. "Dig your finger under it as hard as you can."

He did what she asked without questioning it; this tugged more than it probably should have at her.

She grabbed his wrist, and without a second thought, squeezed it again. Reito frowned.

"I feel like I'm blocking something from moving."

"You are," she said. "Now, without moving your hand, try and unclench his fist."

Reito did, and the fist broke into a flat palm with very little effort. Color started to return to the hand almost immediately, and Midori smiled, let a breath out. "Lucky," she admitted.

"Was it?" Reito was visibly relieved; his face was actually sweating a little.

"I think so," she said quietly. "Lucky that I didn't just squish the vein in between his two pieces of wrist. _Lucky that_ squeezing his wrist a second time actually did something. _Lucky that_ a lot of things."

"You think so?"

"I do." She did; bones liked to be where they were supposed to be, but they couldn't just be expected to go there on their own. Sometimes it took a gentle push.

"Did he just pass out from the shock?"

"I've got no idea," Midori shrugged. "I think he's okay, though."

There was silence for a moment between them. Once again, an awkward moment between the two of them, but this time the moment began to stretch itself out, able to easily fill the space of a minute. Two minutes.

_I feel as though something at this moment is missing. _Both Midori and Reito thought this as one, neither of them aware of the simultaneity of the event.

Midori thought what was missing might have something to do with her, but Reito was certain of what the two of them lacked at that moment. _Midori is missing a willingness to let her guard down around anybody, even_ _just to say, "boy, am I relieved that _that's _over. She's more tense than she was when Minoru's hand was about to explode. What is she afraid of?_

He knew the answer to this almost offhand, of course. She was afraid of him.

But that didn't explain her tension. Nor did it explain why the two of them were still sitting on the floor, trying to count the grains of wood on the walls. That didn't explain why Reito could practically taste Midori's discomfort: Not the discomfort that a little girl felt around her creepy uncle Kenichi, but the discomfort that a woman felt around the boy that she'd dumped and then wanted back, privately: That unwillingness to do anything, and that total commitment to stubbornly, miserably resist any advances he made on her.

_But I'm not her ex-anything. _

Carefully, oh-so-carefully, Reito turned his head so that he could see Midori in his peripheral vision, found her still counting grains, her eyes calm and unfocused. She was absently stroking Minoru's head; Minoru who had entered their world not three hours ago; Minoru who was now tearing their nice, comfortable (if moderately dramatic) vacation into carefully-shredded scrap.

Reito wasn't a writer, nor was he a poet, but he was a student, and he felt that he could fill up a good five-paragraph essay talking about how Midori looked right at that moment: Her red hair, hair that was normally elaborately put up in an extravagant ponytail, now draped around her shoulders, framing her sharp, determined face. About how…

Upon another moment's reflection, mostly to do with just how un-romantic five-paragraph essays really were and how uncreative they became towards paragraph four, Reito decided to settle with _she looks really beautiful. _

_ And, _he decided upon another moment's consideration, _she may be uncomfortable here, but I'm not. _

_I'm not at all._

That was close enough to the truth for Reito.

"Hey, Midori," he said quietly, ending their unspoken grain-counting competition by twisting his head to look at her nonchalantly.

She looked up, startled, and caught his eye. "Mm?" Her eyes were a bit wide; his tone was soft and gentle, and his eyes were clear and confident as they met hers. Her stomach did a little flip, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to vomit or sing.

_Oh, shit._

There were perhaps two people in the world who could have taken the near death of a complete stranger by wrist-dislocation induced shock and turned it into a topic of small talk about a mutual acquaintance, especially in a situation about a nanometer away from being romantic, but one of them was most certainly Reito Kanzaki: "I suppose you and Youko haven't seen anything quite this interesting since grad school, and even then, it probably had something to do with a class."

Words could not convey Midori's shock. _Small talk._

_The son of a bitch is making _small talk.

_It's because you're uncomfortable, and he knows it. _Something about being understood quite so thoroughly bothered Midori—it bothered her a lot. "I guess not." Her tone was clipped, at best, which didn't surprise Reito in the slightest. "Huh."

Even so, she had shifted herself around to face him without realizing it. That could have been interpreted a lot of ways, all of which Reito catalogued and dismissed in the space of about a second. Instead, he just smiled at her. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Than what?" she said; it was a knee-jerk reaction that she found herself cursing a moment after she said it.

"Than before. You seemed very troubled back in Goza."

_You say _troubled _like I _didn't _cuss you out. _

_You're acting again. _

"Yes," she admitted with some difficulty. And then, with less difficulty, a lot less than she'd have expected: "I am. Thank you." And oddly enough, she meant it. Even the last part.

"Then," he said, his voice just as light as it had been a moment ago but his words infinitely more serious, "would you like to go back to Goza later tonight, if the situation allows?"

Midori froze for a moment, every muscle in her body tensing at once as her eyes widened a little bit, more in panic than in shock; not that she hadn't been expecting this, only that she had absolutely no idea what to say now that it was upon her; a few hours ago, she'd have been able to cuss him out and leave. She couldn't do that now, if only out of sheer  
_affection_  
gratitude—for his virtually unfaltering devotion to not letting up on her with his non-advances in spite of her unfaltering bitchery—which said nothing of her lighter mood; the anger that had let her do that had bled out of her earlier, and she wasn't really sure if she could summon that kind of energy again.

She didn't allow herself to stutter, to utter some series of incoherent syllables while her mind grappled violently with the simple _yes-no _dichotomy; she was no longer an awkward teenager as she once was. She was twenty fucking four years old, and damned if she was going to let some—admittedly handsome—nineteen year old reduce her to a puddle of monosyllabic goo.

In the end, it came down to one simple thing holding her back: _If you decide to do this with him, you have to really do it. There will be no pussyfooting around._

_He's still a dick.  
And I still don't like him like that._

But she knew he deserved better, and that aside, she wondered how much longer she would be able to tell herself that before she had to address whatever was really in her heart, be it good or bad.

_Then, I guess you deserve this. _"Fine," she said. "But on my terms."

Reito's mask was perfect; he didn't even crack a grin at his sudden, unexpected victory. "Name them," he said smoothly; if there was a negotiation afoot, he didn't acknowledge it.

"No funny shit. No talking about the professor." Her voice barely even cracked when she said that. That alone merited at least one drink. "And we get somebody to drive us home, and not because I don't trust you to not get yourself as shitfaced as I undoubtedly will."

_But because you don't trust me when you're drunk, _Reito thought. _That's fair. I don't trust me when you're drunk, either. _

Ironically, their mutual lack of trust in Reito had nothing to do with the first condition and everything to do with the second.

Not that Midori thought that Reito wouldn't take advantage of her when she was plastered—she was quite egotistical enough to think that he would. This, she had found, was true for at least four fifths of the male population; no reason it wouldn't be true for him. She had no solid evidence, but she would, she supposed, shortly.

More silence. _Theme of the hour with the two of us, _Midori thought a touch sardonically. _What a promising friendship this looks to become._

Before it could turn into something deafening, though, the thing she whose forehead she had been idly stroking, the limp, lifeless thing whose warmth she had been subconsciously relying on, spoke:

"That's wonderful that you two are on good terms again; I'm glad," as Minoru said it, Midori jumped in shock—she didn't see Reito's reaction, so she assumed, mostly for the sake of her pride, that he was also scared witless, "really, I am. But you, Reito," it was a testament to Minoru's sharp memory that he remembered this boy's name when it hadn't been mentioned any more specifically than in passing, "could you get off my leg before she has to crush that in her fist too?"

Reito moved without acknowledging that he'd done anything wrong in the first place, and without any sort of sheepishness. _That boy is a smooth operator, _Minoru understood immediately as he tested out first his leg, rolling his foot and tensing his calf and thigh muscles, and then his hand, moving his fingers slowly. The latter action hurt a little, and he felt a dull ache immediately flood the appendage; he understood that he'd probably have trouble with the hand until he saw a proper doctor about it, but for the time being he could use it for simple things without too much trouble. He could probably even snipe with it—he had once known a sniper with horrible arthritis in his non-trigger hand. If that bastard could do it, he could do it, and eat a banana doing it out of spite. He hadn't liked that man.

"You're awake," Midori observed helpfully.

Minoru smiled a little too charmingly as he replied, "If that's not true, this is probably the most pleasant state of unconsciousness I've ever experienced."

In retrospect, he said it out of instinct rather than any specific attraction to Midori. That was not to say that the attraction wasn't there; she was a very pretty girl. Rather that he sort of recognized that he didn't know this girl, and she didn't seem like the type to sleep with a man twice her age when she had just been flirt-angsting with another younger, handsomer boy.

Nonetheless, she smiled appreciatively. "Thank you," she said; her voice matched her grin. This didn't baffle Minoru or Reito nearly as much as it would have baffled most males their age. _She looks to me, _Minoru observed, _like a woman who just doesn't get told she's pretty nearly often enough. _He'd met a few of those, and he always told them they were pretty, and there ended their contact. He tended to like them too much to bed them.

Reito simply thought Minoru had said the right thing at the right time. Neither of them were particularly wrong.

After that, Minoru thanked Midori again. Midori just grinned and threw a wisecrack his way, which he fielded with grace befitting of a mildly disinterested forty year old. After that, he left, with a promise to return later.

Because as much as he would have liked to stay and chat with Midori, he understood that he needed to know _why _he was being targeted, and he needed to know before the next Foul Underling came to try and take his head off.

Before he left the cabin, though, he spotted his backpack resting on a wall; he opened it, spotted everything intact inside, including a Beretta M9 pistol and a holster with several spare clips. This made him a very happy man indeed, and he wondered how his karma had ever gotten so good as he strapped the pistol to his waist.

As he tried to holster his backpack with his bad hand, earning him a stab of pain, he remembered: It hadn't.

Even so, he pressed valiantly forward and started hiking towards his first instinct, his old sniping position on the hill overlooking their cabin.

Even so.

* * *

A/N:

The other is this author.


	17. 15: Only the strong 2

Author's notes

Starting to get back on a semi-regular work and writing schedule now; expect more frequent updates. Thanks for sticking with me through the ...bouncy…(Veg didn't really want to say that) times.

Hey, don't forget to drop me a review if you liked the chapter, or even if you didn't , and tell me why you thought what you thought about it!

Disclaimer: My awesome editor, Sumi, tunneled her way through this and dug out the crappy parts in order to make it something readable, but it was, as always, up to me to take her advice. All mistakes are mine and mine alone. Also, I don't own Mai-HiME. Bandai does…does anybody else remember when all you knew Bandai for was a bunch of action figures? Anybody else wonder where they managed to get a gem like Mai-HiME out of that?

* * *

_Maybe / things happen for a reason / and wherein lies the answer / to overcome the grieving / of life's unruly lessons / I'm handed in succession / it fills my faith which makes me… _

_Strong. _

_It's mine / and it's pure and / as decent as I can make myself. _

_

* * *

_

Chapter 15

Only the Strong #2

Even though it was his wrist that was messed up, it was Minoru's back that gave him the most grief as he tried, unsuccessfully, to find a way up the hill he'd been spotting from that didn't involve clearing brush or grasping onto branches for support, or both at once. It was one of the most frustrating things he'd ever done; right on par with trying to navigate through a dog park without stepping in somebody's shit. Every time he thought he'd found a path, something would block it; some dense thatch of foliage or a set of trees and stumps that he couldn't get over with a heavy backpack and only one good hand.

It was a painful reminder that he wasn't young anymore, really. Fifteen years ago, he could have cleared this little piece of forest in ten minutes flat, even with his wrist fucked up as it was.

_cant seem to let go of _

_past that barely ever existed _

_not nearly as romantic _

These thoughts still bothered him occasionally, but it was on very _rare _occasion.

Plagued _is a better word. _

It took him a solid twenty minutes of crashing through the forest like Godzilla plowing through Tokyo looking for a decent puppeteer before he finally made it around to where he'd come before. It was a fairly clean trail, though the lack of foot-sized dents in the foliage here led him to question whether or not he had actually been here before.

_Listen to yourself. _

A minute after he'd started in, he noticed a foot-sized dent in the leaves that covered the ground that was most certainly not his. He used his good hand to reach into his holster and before he noticed that he wasn't having trouble with the latch, he had drawn his Beretta. It took him a little off-guard to find that he could still draw that fast. He hadn't needed to draw in years, and it made him feel a little better; he felt adrenaline start to flow through his body, limbering him up and numbing the pain in his wrist.

_Slow down, Minoru, _he thought. _If somebody was up there, planning on shooting you, they'd have done it a long time ago. Hell, they could have done it in the dark, you're being so damn loud. _

_Ambushes still happen, _he countered, unconcerned about the looming possibility of arguing with himself.

_But Scratch-ass probably wouldn't be the one to order them; he's more of a shit-crazy nut than that. Remember what he said before? If one of you dies— _

It clicked in his head a second later, and he wondered how he had ever forgotten that creepy son of a bitch's warning in the first place.

_We'll shoot the other. _

Minoru was looking in the wrong place. Ten minutes later (the other guy had really chosen a much better spot to snipe from; no horrid ascent plagued Minoru this time), he was up the hill several dozen meters from his, and a moment later, he found what he was looking for: Nori. Very dead Nori; blood had started to pool around his stomach from a thin wound on his back: Somebody had put a knife through his spine, by the looks of it; a pair of footprints on either side of his torso told him as much, and told him that they'd done it without much of a pretense. _Or much of a struggle. The leaves and grass around him aren't even riled up. _

It frightened Minoru more than a little to think about that. Stealthy bastards such as whoever had done this were the bane of snipers: You couldn't really flat-out charge somebody like Minoru and expect to make it more than twenty feet, and Minoru's senses, still-undulled in spite of his age, were still very, very good. So for somebody to have taken Nori—who couldn't have been more than ten years younger than Minoru (not to mention completely asexual and therefore impossible to distract) completely off-guard like this…you didn't get people that good very often, and when you did, they tended to kill their share and then some.

_You're so dead, _he thought without wanting to. _If you've got this ninja or whatever he is after you, _and _that crazy bastard Scratch-ass…and he _is _after you now. Now that your partner's dead. _

He didn't like where this train of thought was heading, but like most trains, he was powerless to stop it.

_It probably didn't even occur to him that I wasn't even in the area when he died. Stupid bastard. This isn't even sort of fair. Not at all like the lazy years…at your age, up against somebody like him…you're so fucking dead. _

But something occurred to him: _When exactly did the lazy years end? Did they ever really end? Maybe it's harder to find jobs recently, but have they ever been tough? And if I'm really going so far to pot, would I really be able to carry out tough jobs? _

Minoru and Midori were more alike than they could have known even if they had been closely acquainted for more than about twelve hours. All at once, insecurity that he had never even recognized surfaced, and then vanished as he thought, _it can't be both, but it can certainly be neither. _

Really, Minoru was pretty lucky. The kind of insecurity he was experiencing now usually hit people much harder, especially as they neared their inevitable midlife crises; he hadn't expected it to hit him at all, but he supposed that was just hubris. He had probably started feeling that way when he had been so thoroughly whupped by a bunch of kids, none of whom were more than half his age except for Midori; there were certainly worse reasons to angst about his age, but he couldn't think of them off-hand.

_So don't, asshole. _

Minoru shook his head and turned to head back to the cabin, but not before giving Nori's corpse an obligatory "you dead?" nudge. He repeated the process once for good measure; he had met a guy once in northern China that he thought he'd killed, and that had sprung up and tried to kill him when his back was turned. Admittedly, he'd botched the ambush terribly, mostly due to the gaping hole that Minoru had left in his esophagus, but still, it was worth another nudge.

_If only the bastard had had the courtesy to drop his_ _gun somewhere where I could find it, _he mused as he started back down the hill, using a different route than the one he'd used during his ascent. _Not that I'm jealous or anything, but that was certainly a nice scope. _

_You're jealous. _

Minoru was, in fact, so jealous that he tripped over the meter-long metallic tube that had lodged itself between a pair of trees. He lashed out with both his good and bad hands just quickly enough to keep himself from the kind of tumble usually reserved for extras in comedy movies and action flicks, and, along with a fresh surge of pain from his bad hand, he found himself afforded a lovely view of a mediocre rifle with a massive scope.

Minoru Alder was a lucky man indeed.

Or maybe not.

* * *

Mai was about _this _close to having a nervous breakdown. She said that to herself, and even thought up a little ruler to measure the space between the fingers she envisioned smushed together in her mind's eye. There wasn't much to measure.

She sighed and leaned back against the wall that divided the boys' and girls' halves of the cabin, though admittedly, they were presently in a state of relative integration; Midori had more or less kicked the boys out of their half so that she could work on that guy they picked up. That _guy. _

_Just some guy they picked up? Did Midori pick him up in a bar? That woman…_Mai shook her head, refusing to get as angry as she wanted to get, deep down inside. _Very _deep. _But still…who does that? _

_A lot of people. _Normal _people, who go out and do normal things. Who go meet people in bars if they don't have boyfriends. _

_Who talk to their boyfriends if they do. Who do…other things. Whose boyfriends don't let groupies hang off of them. _

_Normal people. _

Yuuichi nudged her with his elbow as he slid down next to her, and she jumped, coming about (again, _smush_) _this _close to shrieking out in alarm, as though she hadn't heard the toilet (which was now busy swirling whatever Yuuichi had put in it about in a vain attempt to sanitize itself) flush.

Yuuichi noticed the shock on her face, and, in spite of Mai's every effort to prevent just such a thing from happening, frowned. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She was very obviously not, and it showed on her face in a way that anybody could see if they paid attention and knew Mai, and which very few people subsequently ever picked up on; a certain hesitation, like she was willing the muscles of her face to _move damnit _and then a smile, as cute as she could make it when it was so obviously forced. Yuuichi didn't like that smile on her; some guys probably went for the frightened-schoolgirl look, because that was precisely what it was, but Yuuichi had his own personal frightened schoolgirl that usually refused to detach itself from his arm; it was enough to put just about anybody off the habit.

Even through that smile, he could sense her inwardly curling up into a little ball. It was something she did in the face of something that she felt like she should bear rather than actively trying to change: She smiled, bore it, and inwardly she scrunched herself up into as small of a ball as possible, like a protective shell. It worked for her; the tighter her ball got, the less of anything she felt. The problem with this was that it also tended to scare her away from other people; emotion was emotion, good or bad, and you couldn't differentiate when you were being defensive.

Yuuichi hadn't explicitly _worked _at trying to get her to stop doing that; he believed that a person should be allowed to feel how they want to feel, and interfering with other people's emotion was just insulting. But he _had _seen her slowly begin to come out of that shell that she had built up around herself for most of her life; the shell that had kept both he _and _Reito out for a long, long time.

"I'm fine," she said, finally. It had taken her a lot of time to work up the courage to lie fluently again. She had to do it less these days, and it had become harder as practice became more scarce.

Obligatory lie told, Yuuichi was now allowed to comfort her: Almost without thinking about it, he reached around over her shoulders and pulled Mai into his chest, and almost as soon as she touched it, she relaxed. Yuuichi could practically see the tension drift off of her shoulders and up, in a thin, wispy cloud, towards the ceiling.

For a lot of people, especially in Japan, this kind of an act was best saved for someplace where, if privacy was impossible, the image of anonymity could at least be maintained. For a lot of girls, resting their head against a boy they liked meant a lot more than what it did for Mai Tokiha; it meant some sort of mildly timid, even very, very vaguely sexual display of affection.

Mai was just happy to be there.

Yuuichi grinned down at her hair, lacking a decent view of her face as she nestled into him, her face warm and soft against him; it was a grin that was an affection that was somewhere near that of a child in that it was blind and completely, utterly pure, and that was his, and only his.

They sat there like that for a little while that stretched into a space not nearly long enough for Yuuichi's taste, in silence; the only sound was the gentle whisper of Mai's breath on Yuuichi's shirt.

When Minoru screamed from the other room, Mai jerked against him, but said nothing; Yuuichi, by that point, had gone into a serene, pleased, halfway-meditative state, so what he thought first as Mai jumped and brought him out of it was, _wow, Mai's really warm. _

What he thought next was, _she's also very soggy. Is it raining? _

By the third second, he'd put it together in his head, but he also knew that he didn't know what to do. He didn't even know why she was crying.

_So ask her, stupid. _

Easier said then done. "M…Mai," he managed to get out quietly, his words more empathetic than his stutter would have suggested. "What is it?" He pulled her a little tighter.

She didn't speak, and Yuuichi frowned. "What is it? Mai?" He pulled her a little tighter.

Again, nothing. Yuuichi began to worry as the pool of wet on his shirt increased. _Is this something really serious? _He thought, feeling that little ache in his belly specially reserved for matters of grave import with regards to one's love life. _Is there something wrong that she can't tell me? _

_Or that I should be telling her? _

Again, Yuuichi realized that he had no idea what to do in a situation like this except listen to what Mai had to say._ But she's not saying anything. _

_Could it be about Shiho? Or about…_a little jerk in his stomach, _Reito? _

It only vaguely occurred to him at this point that he was breaking his agreement with Reito simply by holding Mai like this. What had he been thinking when he made that agreement? What had _Reito _been thinking? Didn't he know they were dating?

_Mai, please, say something to me. _

_Mai, please. I can't help you unless you talk to me. _

_I can't ask you to talk any more than this. _

_Please. _

_Mai. _

Mai was gently tugging at the arm he had wrapped so tightly around her head. He automatically loosened his grip, and Mai immediately pulled out of his embrace, and in that moment, his stomach leaked entirely out his bowels.

Then she started panting.

_What? _

"Mai…?" he asked cautiously. "Please…tell me what's…"

It took her a moment to speak, and when she did, it was hesitant.

"I was just thinking," she said quietly, "about how long it's been since we've gotten to be this close by ourselves."

Yuuichi nodded and shook his head with a sigh. "I know. I'm sorry about—"

"Don't apologize for Shiho," Mai interrupted. Mai rarely interrupted people, so when she did, you shut up and paid attention. "That's what you were about to do, right?"

Yuuichi nodded silently.

"Don't," Mai repeated. "I know you…and she…" there were about a million things Yuuichi could think to put in those spaces, but he couldn't decide on any particular set. "But don't. Mikoto apologized to me earlier, and now she's sulking, I think."

"Are you embarrassed about what Mikoto did?"

"A little," Mai admitted. This made perfect sense to Yuuichi: Even if it was sorely merited, Mai didn't that kind of confrontation; she hated it. Hated fighting with other people. Hated alienating other people from herself.

"Don't be," Yuuichi said. "I think I should have said something like that to her a long time ago. So _I'm _sorry."

"It's okay," Mai said automatically. "It's no problem."

_Bull. Shit. _

The two of them lapsed into silence, and Yuuichi thought, _now what? How rough has this really been for her? _The way she'd said "it's no problem" made Yuuichi understand very clearly that he could never tell her about what he'd promised Reito, ever, and the way she was acting told him….He glanced briefly at the massive wet stain on his shirt. _Was this really…_

"That wasn't all…" Mai said, ever-observant. (And articulate.) "It was…actually…ah…"

_It wasn't what? It wasn't tears of sadness? Pain? _

_It wasn't tears for us? _

_This is …this inability to really have time, to spend time together with _only _each other, it's going to kill one of us, if not both. _

"Spit."

Yuuichi blinked. "What?"

"I, ah…" Mai wiped at her eyes with her palm. "When you had me pressed into you…like that, I couldn't…" She hesitated. A lot. "I couldn't breathe."

It took Yuuichi almost ten seconds to fully process this.

When he did, he wasn't sure if he was allowed to laugh.

Mai did it for him. She dissolved completely into a small, genuine laugh, one which Yuuichi sincerely echoed.

_I don't understand this girl all the time. She's crying one second, and laughing the next, and then I, who was scared out of his mind not two minutes ago, is guffawing along with her._

_What's the next step? What's left for me to learn?_

What happened next is best observed stepwise, as with the death of the poor, well-constructed noodle display, because stepwise is how it would forever be ingrained in Yuuichi's memory; as a series of moments which, by themselves, meant everything to him, and when strung together resonated in his mind for a long time to come.

In the first moment, Mai stops laughing. Yuuichi is still caught up in his open, honest chuckle—unbeknownst to him, Mai thinks, _I love that laugh, that laugh that he can bellow out without any reservation_; she only tells him this years later, after he laughs at something she mumbles as they both slide towards sleep in the aftermath of their lovemaking—but Mai's face has suddenly become very serious.

In the second moment, Yuuichi stops abruptly, and something in his stomach starts wiggling around as he looks into her eyes and finds them staring at his very, very steadily.

In the third moment, her stoic gaze wavers to his lips and the wiggling starts increasing in strength and frequency.

In the fourth moment, Mai's eyes slide closed. In the fifth, Yuuichi's eyes follow suit.

In the sixth moment, they kiss. Their kiss is passionate but quick. There is no tongue to it, though some time into the future they find that tongue is something they both enjoy with a passion. Mai leads; it is her lips that close on Yuuichi's, and not the other way around, because of her self-doubt. Her suddenly raging insecurity that he will reject her, throw her back and yell at her, and her inexplicable, undeniable need to taste his lips at least once before he does. This is one of the few selfish acts that Mai has ever engaged in, and certainly the most enjoyable of them.

In the seventh moment, they are still kissing, and Yuuichi has done nothing of the sort.

In the tenth moment, they part, and Yuuichi grins at her. Mai grins back, but Yuuichi sees something in his peripheral vision. He turns to look at the door and sees…

Reito.

Grinning at him. His grin is like a knife, but a sheathed one. There is no anger in his eyes; what Yuuichi sees is only a sort of vague annoyance, one that said to him, _you broke the promise, but that's okay. _

Mai frowned and looked over at where Yuuichi was staring, his face horrified. _What is… _

Reito's look scared her as much as it appeared to scare Yuuichi, and she didn't know why, but a moment later, he winked at the two of them and jerked his head backwards. He vanished from sight a second later, and Midori appeared in view. She spotted them a second after that, and said, her voice less playful than normal, "Ooh, caught the lovers making out!" A second later, Chie appeared with her camera phone.

What progressed from there made Mai forget all about the look on Reito's face. He even joined in on the teasing that ensued in his very subtle, gentle way.

Yuuichi didn't forget, though.

**

* * *

**

Minoru had just started to get used to the idea that maybe his luck hadn't deserted him after all when he felt something poking at his back. Something really, really sharp. He froze, taking in the near-perfect silence around him and wondering how exactly somebody could be quite so silent in the middle of a forest.

Neither of them moved; whoever it was that had the upper hand on him seemed content to keep it and leave it undisturbed for the moment. Likewise, Minoru, a patient man, was content to wait it out. He had a feeling he wasn't about to be executed; maybe it was just him, but if he'd wanted to kill somebody by sneaking up on them, he probably would have done it already. With a gun. From far, far away.

Maybe that was just him.

Minoru wasn't sure how long he and his assailant stood there, but what he was sure of was that his muscles were going to start to ache soon. He had just finished straightening up with Nori's rifle in his good hand, resting on his bad one so he didn't have to use it to clutch anything too tightly, when he had been accosted by this silent assailant with what could have been, for all he knew, a pointed stick as easily as it could have been a knife. The trouble with this position was, very simply, that the rifle was really, really heavy. That was why it had a bipod, which, ironically enough, only made it heavier right now.

Two minutes passed. Three. His bad wrist was starting to throb from the weight of the rifle. In a passing thought, he reflected upon whether or not this was what the arthritis that had claimed several good (read: rival) snipers he'd known was like. If so, he decided, he was more than happy staying middle-aged for a good, long time.

Finally, with the lactic acid in his muscles threatening to eat its way out of his skin, he gave in: "Listen," he said carefully, his voice very, very gentle. He waited a moment, and nobody stabbed him to death, so he decided it was all right to continue. "You might be young and spry, but I'm getting on a little bit in years, and this rifle is really, really heavy, and I'm about to drop it. The safety is off, and in all likelihood, it will go off, and then you're probably going to stab me out of reflex, presuming you're young and spry and all that. So, either put your pointy stick away or let me put this thing down, okay?"

"Set it down slowly," Pointy-stick replied.

The voice was what really startled him the most. But then again, it didn't, really. He had heard it before. Had it taken him off-guard then, too? He couldn't remember.

_Which is pretty sad, since "before" is less than twenty-four hours ago. _

It was the voice of that ninja that had put him in this mess in the first place— _If I could find a plot to put behind a novel that started like that, I could make a lot of money, _Minoru thought—the one who had said only two words, "that's all," after she had finished disarming him. The voice was sort of deep and hoarse, but it also possessed just a touch of femininity that most men couldn't fake even if they tried, which led him to believe that the ninja was a female.Before, he had thought it was a male, but most of that was due to his _blinding agony _as he tried to struggle and curse and slowly learned that his muscles not only refused to move, but rewarded him with intense pain as he did.

He did what the ninja said, though, and set the rifle down on the ground. _Akira, _he thought as he did. _That was her name. Was it really a _her, _though? _

Probably. Guys really did have a harder time injecting femininity into their voices than females did making their voices masculine.

As he straightened up again, he said, "So, are we going to play the 'let's all wait for Minoru to make a sudden move so we can stab him' game again? Or are you going to tell me what it is you want before I die of a heart attack?"

He wondered what it was that gave him this kind of courage a moment after he said it. It certainly wasn't the knowledge that he was probably older than Akira; young people with guns and knives were a lot more resistant to authority than young people without them, and if you tried to force them to submit by virtue of age anyway, they were pretty likely to kill you because they didn't know what else to do.

"That depends on what you have to tell me."

Minoru frowned. _I'm being interrogated now? _"What do you want to know?"

Minoru's breaking point had never been very high; he tended to submit to interrogation rather than bravely resist. Sure, it meant betraying somebody who had paid him to do something, but it also meant keeping his tongue. Which was important.

"Who are you working for?"

Minoru chuckled as he realized he couldn't really answer that question. "See, the trouble is, I have no idea what his name is." And then, because he couldn't resist, "I could tell you I work for Scratch-ass, because that's what I call him, but I don't think that will be much help."

Oddly enough, Akira didn't laugh at this. "How were you paid?"

"Money wired to my account. I got orders on a radio set that I think you took off of me back in Goza, but I don't think monitoring it will help much."

"I know. Tell me why."

"He seems to be out gunning for my ass at the moment. And by 'he,' I mean 'all his little henchmen.'" Unspoken was the implied, _of whom I used to be one. Very recently. _

Again, "Why?"

Minoru chuckled. "Actually, because of that guy." His expression would have been a lot more useful if he'd had the balls to actually flick his head in the direction of Nori's corpse. "The one with the hole in his back up the hill." A flicker of understanding in his head, and then, "You did that, didn't you?"

_There aren't really a lot of people that can sneak up on an entrenched sniper, and I'd guess there aren't many ninja around here anymore, either. Two plus two equals…_

"I did." At least she wasn't sheepish about it. No use being sheepish about somebody you'd already gutted.

"Well, that's why they're gunning for me. Because of him. The deal was, 'if one of you dies, we'll shoot the other,' and, well…he's dead." _four. Except when it doesn't. _Because it didn't always.

Akira didn't question the logic. She didn't need to. "Will he send others after you?"

Minoru paused to consider, but not long. "Probably. And they'll probably be doing it exactly the same way this guy watched the cabin down there; from a long way away, with a big, silent rifle. They don't know where I am yet, but I'm willing to bet that they'll find out soon enough." Another flicker of understanding. "And that's bad. Because those people in that cabin are your friends."

Akira, _my old mark had said, _you can come out now. _Two plus two… _

Akira said nothing, so Minoru spoke, and did so with even more caution than when he had been afraid that he was about to be gutted. "If you're going after this guy, we could probably help each other out."

"You're planning on fleeing as soon as possible." Akira didn't make it a question, and, unfortunately, she was spot-on. He was grateful, and a little attracted, to the girl Midori, but he wasn't _bullet-in-my-skull-for-you _attracted to her. He hadn't actually ever been that taken with any girl. Maybe he was just smarter than the guys who had taken bullets in their skulls for girls who were now fucking other men.

Minoru had no idea what to say. Akira was right, of course: This wasn't the first deal of his that had gone sour, and it wouldn't be the first time he had to disappear. It didn't really bother him to have to do that.

"I'll warn you now that I have people watching you; people like me." _Were _there more ninja in the Goza area? Was that maybe why the tourism here was so bad? "If you try to flee before this is settled, you will die. If you endanger any of my f…those people down there, you will die. Understand?"

"Yeah." Minoru frowned. Maybe he wasn't so lucky after all.

But then again, he wasn't dead. That by itself was evidence to the contrary. And maybe this was something he should do, anyway. "I'll help you."

Akira said nothing, but Minoru had a feeling she was surprised anyway. He wasn't really the _I'll help you_ type. He was more of the _holy shit, it's the pope! _and flee type. But if he was stuck here, and he was going to have people out gunning for him, wasn't it better to have the ninjas on his side?

_Again, I could make some money with that tagline._

Minoru obviously wasn't much of a writer.

Ten minutes later, Minoru was most of the way back to the cabin, a lot less comfortable than he'd been half an hour ago when his only worry was a banged-up wrist. He found that the red-haired girl had been caught making out with her boyfriend—_can't really blame him, _remarked the side of him that he liked to call his _I actually _do _want to go to jail _side. Before he'd gotten to the camp, he'd disassembled the rifle and stored it in his now obscenely heavy backpack, and as a result had very nearly broken his neck coming down the steps from the parking lot.

He had been planning on telling them that they should maybe clear out for a little while because there was some trouble going on around him. When he saw the spectacle that was starting to form mostly around the orange-haired girl and her boyfriend, he couldn't. Just couldn't. Even worse than that, he had no idea why.

As it turned out, that saved their lives, but he didn't know that at the time.

He only knew, as he stood on the outskirts of their group—behind the cabin, but a safe distance from the slightly creepy pink-haired girl sulking fairly miserably in a bush— that for the first time in a very, very long time, he felt just a little lonely.

* * *

A/N

No Shizuru and Natsuki this chapter; see their stunning return next chapter in Mai-HiME, Resolution part 17: I still know what you're looking at, Mary, and Jesus does too! (Guess the quote, get a gold star).

See chapter 3: Shoot me again

See chapter 6: Guarded


	18. 16: In Memory

Author's notes:

Reviewer's corner: Back by (un)popular demand. Thanks to all those who reviewed: xSojix, Interstate 405, and Kjarri! Also, thanks to new reviewers, SpookyMulder1, BetweenHeavenAndHell, Akuma-sama, and Dorian!

As always, thanks go out to my wonderful editor, Sumiregawa. Without her, this fic would be much, much worse than it is. All mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Kjarri gets a gold star for identifying the quote in chapter 17: It was, indeed, from _Saved!_ Go on. Take your gold star. Take it!

(cough)

And hey, if you liked the chapter, don't forget to drop me a review! (Or if you didn't, even) Reviewing an author is like tipping a waiter or waitress: It brings good karma, and it keeps the author going another day.

As always, thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I don't own Mai-HiME, nor do I own Sunrise. I also recently sold Minoru Alder on eBay to an auspiciously-titled buyer (SunAreEyes). So now I guess Sunrise owns me. Damnit. Foiled again.

* * *

_Some of the ugliest things took the longest time to make / and some of the easiest habits are the hardest ones to break_

_I can't live in the past / and drown myself in memories_

_

* * *

_

In Memory / Hell #1

_I feel like…I feel like maybe I could disappear. _

Shizuru had only thought this once before in her life, and it had come to her in the same way: In the midst of external chaos and internal peace. Not a lighthouse on the ocean at night, but a candle in the woods at dusk, not something to be guided by, but something to pay heed to nonetheless. Something not to let go.

And just as

_do you hate me that much!_

before, Shizuru felt as though she was grasping at straws to drink with as the river dried up in front of her. Trying to hang on to something she had held onto for a long time while the thing that she _actually _needed slipped away from her.

Chaos around her. Yes. Chaos. She was at utter peace during times of the greatest chaos. Those were the times when she knew precisely what to do. It was the _rest _of her life she had trouble with. Trying to balance school and work and

_Natsuki_

the things she wanted that had to do with neither. Shizuru felt her eyes slide shut, block out the clamor of the chaos around her. In doing this, she was able to see what she needed to see.

_Natsuki. I feel like maybe I could disappear. _It echoed in her mind, and as before, she clung onto it. _Natsuki. I feel like maybe I could disappear._

_Natsuki.  
I feel like…  
Disappear…  
Natsuki…  
Natsuki-Ru.  
Ru.  
_--Ru?  
"Shizuru?"

Shizuru blinked the world returned to her in a wave. Immediately, she found her vision unexpectedly, though not-unpleasantly filled with Natsuki's large, green eyes. The chaos was still around her. Nothing had changed since she'd retreated into her own head, allowed herself that small, temporary respite. She blinked again.

"Yes?" she said, her voice just a little muddled, as though she'd been woken from a nap. After that, she spoke more slowly, to cover the effect. "I'm sorry. Did I drift off?"

Natsuki shook her head. "I'm not sure." For a moment, Shizuru was certain of the presence of … something, some emotion that she couldn't entirely place…in Natsuki's voice, but in the next second, it was gone, replaced by the flat, slightly aloof tone that Natsuki used to separate herself from the rest of the world, usually right about when the rest of the world wanted something out of her. "I was just trying to get your attention."

_What did you want, Natsuki? _

_Did you want to tell me something?_

"Oh," Shizuru's voice was still having that problem of being unable to sound as though she had been awake for more than a minute or two. "I'm sorry. Was it important?"

Natsuki shook her head. "It can wait."

Shizuru looked straight into Natsuki's eyes, and realized she couldn't tell what exactly Natsuki meant by that. She couldn't read her at all.

That had happened before.

That had happened most often around the same time she had been thinking about disappearing. Shizuru felt her chest shiver a little, as though she was cold in spite of the warmth of the sun, which was, little by little, fading into the horizon, dashing the ocean with just the faintest hint of pink.

_The ocean is never really anything but transparent, _she mused, her mind traveling off on a whim even as her subconscious took over for her actions, directing her to smile as Chie raced by with Aoi in hot pursuit; directed her to step aside as Mai and Mikoto blew past her, close to knocking her down. _It's nothing by itself; it forms its own color by absorbing other colors. What it doesn't absorb is what we see painted on its surface. _

_Natsuki is nothing like the ocean. _

She moved aside as Chie and Aoi looped around. Apparently, Chie was currently in possession of some personal article of Aoi's, or possibly of Mai's.

_She absorbs what you don't see. She absorbed all the bad things, and yet…_

Natsuki was watching the quickly-developing race, seemingly uninterested. She didn't notice Shizuru studying her.

_Studying _was perhaps not the right word;_ studying _implied some science or method to the way Shizuru's eyes traveled over Natsuki's long, dark hair, catching the wind just _so, _so that the fine strands of hair blew back as one, framing her melancholy, light-skinned face.

Without meaning to, Shizuru found herself gazing at Natsuki's lips. Small, pale, and  
_maybe…still a little moist_  
soft.

Before her gaze could travel any farther downwards, though, Natsuki's eye twitched slightly, and Shizuru, already on edge, diverted her gaze towards the ocean immediately. As soon as she stopped being able to see Natsuki, however, it was like her vision ceased to be something worthy of her attention.

_It is a beautiful thing to see only one person._

She was sure she had said that to somebody once.

"Shizuru?"

Shizuru reacted automatically, as though the voice coming seemingly out of nowhere—it was, in fact, coming from behind her—hadn't surprised her: "Yes?" She turned around to find Reito standing there, and smiled without thinking about it.

Reito grinned at her like an affectionate, mildly concerned, brother; it was the same expression that had given half of Fuuka Academy's student body the impression that he and Shizuru were dating, and, in some far-off corner of her brain, Shizuru understood why; it was a smile which broadcasted, sincerely, the emotions it was meant to imply. "Are you feeling all right?" Reito asked, his voice and tone just a little formal.

Shizuru wondered briefly if Reito had, at some point in his life, been honestly sincere about the feelings his smile put forth. If he had ever nursed some sort of attraction to her. It wasn't the sort of thing Reito would do, to simply let it sit and breed, but Shizuru was still left wondering, if only because she had never really paid attention to it.

_But in seeing only one person, you miss out on the cliff directly ahead of you. _

Somebody had said that to her. She couldn't remember who, but somebody had. It had been shortly after she had spoken of seeing only one person.

"Yes, I'm fine," Shizuru said as though her little internal reverie was nothing more than a thought, to be blown away with the winds of the conversation. "I'm sorry, did I look unwell?" Privately, she marveled at how little she sounded like she was actually speaking to somebody when she addressed Reito. Marveled and cursed; they had never been intimate, but they _had _been close, and right at that moment, Shizuru felt a sort of wall blocking _something _between them; something necessary for easy communication.

She didn't know, however, from where this wall had come.

And yet, Reito gave no sign that he was at all fazed by her severe formality. He just grinned and relaxed his own tone, as though in response. "You were just staring out at the ocean. I had called for you several times, actually." Reito said it with just a touch of sheepishness, and Shizuru frowned. That wasn't like her, and yet this was the second time it had happened to her in less than ten minutes. As though reading her thoughts, Reito continued, "If I interrupted you, I apologize."

Shizuru smiled at him and said, "No, there's nothing to apologize for," even as she dug her nails into her palms, resisting the flow of helplessness that washed over her in the face of Reito's near-perfect disingenuousness.

But, of course, she didn't. She never did. Ever.

"Are you certain there's nothing troubling you?" His tone was formal enough that he may as well have thrown a brick at her, reminding her, _hey, talking behind a wall, remember? _

_The trouble is, Reito, I got something I've sought for a long, long time today. I got something from Natsuki, and I want to treasure it, store it, keep it somewhere in me where nobody else can have it, ever ever ever, but something in her eyes tells me that even if I have that, I don't have _her,_ and I know nobody's supposed to possess_ anybody _but I can't help thinking that maybe if I just _"Just reflecting on the sunset."

After she said this, Shizuru's mouth clenched itself shut.

Because she knew that she would have been able to tell Reito at least a part of that, some time ago. Back in the mythical _back then, _when everything was good and right and happy, because that was _then _but this was _now, _and nothing could ever be quite right _now. _

She looked up at Reito, and saw something guarded within his eyes: Concern.

Then it vanished as his eyes flicked upward, away from Shizuru and the ocean for a moment, towards something distant on the beach. Shizuru waited the requisite ten seconds, allowing the silence to settle in over them like dust after a sandstorm, and then flicked her own eyes to where Reito had, and saw what he had seen.

She saw Midori, chatting idly with Chie, who had Aoi in a half-headlock. Midori looked as carefree as she ever did, a sentiment that Shizuru was fully aware was a complete fabrication. As did, she suspected, all of the ex-HiME. It was impossible to say that somebody who fought with as much skill and vigor as Midori was carefree.

_Then again, I suppose that makes it impossible to call me carefree, either._

_After all, I _did…

She closed her mind off before she remembered things that she most certainly did _not _want to remember.

"Shizuru?"

_I did it again. I need to start pinching myself. _

"Yes?" she asked with a smile that she had to drag, kicking and screaming, onto her face.

Reito's eyes flicked upwards again, and Shizuru felt a pang inside of her.

"Would you like some tea in the cabin?"

Shizuru blinked. Before, when they had both attended the same school, that had been code for, _we should talk. Privately. _Whether it still was now, Shizuru couldn't say. She stood anyway, and glanced at Natsuki.

Natsuki, who was still studying the sunset. Who, in that very singular moment, may as well have _been _the sunset.

Shizuru honestly didn't know what that meant. She only knew that Natsuki, so utterly absorbed in what she saw, seemed unbearably far away. Shizuru could have reached out and touched her, stroked her hair, felt it flow between her fingertips, and it would have seemed no more real than grasping at the fading rays of the sun.

Shizuru shook her head and stood up. "Yes. That, I think, would be nice. Natsuki," she said to nothing at all, "I'm going for a while."

Natsuki nodded absently. Which meant that she was listening, and probably, Shizuru thought, that she was experiencing some sort of turmoil of her own.

Shizuru felt that she might never know what that turmoil was. And that thought alone was enough to make her want to start walking into the ocean, and not stop.

It was only a momentary thought, though. She forced it from her head and followed Reito to the cabin.

* * *

The man with the scratchy voice was disappointed in his agents' lack of progress, but at the same time, mildly impressed at what had been stifling them. Provided that his agents' reports were accurate, that is. In fact, if these reports were accurate, he was fairly well delighted.

It was, after all, _quite _rare for a modern paramilitary organization to do battle with a group of ninja. While the man with the scratchy voice was not one to dwell upon fortune or glory, he recognized clearly the invaluable status such a victory would impart his organization. Those who may be his rivals sometime in the near future would be those who already knew of this clan of ninja, he speculated; and that would mean that they would know who defeated them. And then…

_And then they would know who it is they should fear. _

He thumbed his radio with some flourish. "All field units," he rasped into the receiver, "we have an added objective: Observation and decimation of the intervening ninja. If you have a shot, gentlemen, please take it. You may not get a second one."

There were no replies, no calls of _roger_ to answer him. Hopefully, the man with the scratchy voice thought, this would mean that at least one of his units _did _have a shot.

* * *

James Sunderland did, indeed, have a shot. Or, at least, he thought he did: His eye was sharp; as sharp as that of any other sniper of his relatively young age, but his confidence was not. He was at that crucial stage of professional development that Minoru Alder could have told him was the most dangerous part of his career; before he achieved the relatively serene wisdom of age, but after his adolescent reflexes had begun to fade.

Of course, James' reflexes were still very good, as was his eye. He had taken the top prize in the West Virginia National Guard's marksmanship competition in South Ashfield, three years in a row.

Ninja, however, were not big wood and metal targets, and, in the dark, hidden crevasses of his mind—the same ones where, nightly, he imagined that he finally got up the balls to cheat on Chandra with that girl, Yumiko, that he'd met at his hotel—he honestly had no idea whether he had been staring, through his scope, at a human or a blob of shadow cast by a tree for the past ten minutes. It was starting to scare him: Ninja weren't even supposed to exist! Who was to say what this one, if it is one, could do to him?

_Tear down this tree branch with a single stroke of his hand_

_That could well be him and he could just vanish as soon as I pull the trigger and give away my position and then who knows what could happen to me isn't that what happened to that other guy_

The wind started to blow at that point, and James cursed silently. James had cursed like a sailor back in South Ashfield. He had stopped after his first assignment, when his cursing reflex had nearly gotten him killed by an attentive perimeter guard on the outskirts of a Russian outpost somewhere just outside of Bumfuck, Yugoslavia. Maybe he would have cursed with more flourish if he'd known it was the last time he would ever get to do it.

The shadow shifted and James Sunderland, no longer possessing the reflexes of his youth, not yet having acquired the wisdom of age, hesitated for half a second and then pulled the trigger. His rifle hissed, solitary sound that, in his mind, echoed throughout the entire godforsaken forest around him. There was no cry of pain to signal a hit, but also no scrambling of feet to signal a near miss. He squeezed his left eye shut and pressed the scope to his right eye as hard as possible, as though trying to pop it through the glass and see just a little bit better.

Nothing was moving except the leaves.

He let out a long, deep sigh and relaxed his shoulders just a little.

_Nothing there. Nothing at all. Just the wind casting some shadows; chances are I just scared the pants off of some poor animal is all. _

After allowing himself a few more breaths; long and deep, just like the other, he shifted his position so that he was facing the camp where his marks were currently playing in the sand, having a merry old time that, under normal circumstances, would have made James a little jealous.

Ironically, James wasn't jealous because, at that moment, he was just happy to be alive.

He peered through his scope again, trying to spot the one with the long, brown hair. It took him a few seconds to find her; she was half-obscured by a tree, talking with a taller, handsomer boy with darker hair wearing a fairly tasteful Hawaiian shirt. James found that to be a feat unto itself. Again, though, no jealousy. The air up by his branch was too damn sweet for that.

_Hey, _he thought as she began to follow him to the cabin, probably to go screw or something, _maybe I'll take her hint and go visit Yumiko tonight. Maybe that wouldn't be such a _

The knife pierced James Sunderland's spinal cord at the base of his neck, in what was, in fact, only a millimeter off from where it had pierced the spine of Nori Ikimasu. His brain shut off immediately, before he had a chance to think, _there had never been a ninja there. He set up a decoy to draw me out. There was nothing magical about it at all, he was just waiting for me in some other tree, _something he undoubtedly would have considered given a little time. He was, after all, not too far off from the age where wisdom inevitably began to replace the void that his youthful reflexes had left long ago.

The ninja left him hanging there by the straps which secured him to the tree. It was a better hiding place for a body than any on the ground because, the ninja knew, man's biggest weakness was that he considered the sky to be indefinitely out of reach, and as a result, he never looked up.

The ninja began moving, planning to report the kill and its implications back to Akira. He never got a chance.

Harry Townsend's single, .308 caliber round did exactly what the field manual had said it would: It blew through the front of the ninja's skull, made dogshit out of his brain, and then kept right on going, its vector altered slightly due to the angle of the target's head. It wound up in a pile of leaves, probably half an inch under the ground, maybe less.

Not exactly as he'd have liked it, but he didn't mind. The ninja's body dropped to the ground, impacting with a _thunk _that, to Harry, was reminiscent of dropping a sack of potatoes off of a rooftop.

_About time, too, _Harry thought. _I'd been aiming at that other fucker for at least an hour. I was starting to get sick of it. _He didn't suppose James would have appreciated being used as bait. But then, Harry supposed, he probably wasn't going to catch any shit for it. Orders from the top, and all.

Just orders.

* * *

It wasn't long before Akira Okuzaki found her ninja's body. By that time, though, Harry was long gone, along with the rest of his team, but Akira still checked every single tree in the area, her knife clutched tightly in her hand, fire in her eyes.

She supposed it would be time to talk to Minoru again. Apparently she had underestimated "scratch-ass." She wouldn't do that a second time.

* * *

A/N: I've referenced two somewhat popular video games (Both on the PS2 and, with less popularity, the PC) somewhere in this chapter. One is more explicit than the other, which I have hidden slightly by altering it just a little. Spot either or both, send me an email or leave it in a review, and win a gold star.

Wasn't exactly a Shiz/Nat chapter, huh. I found it interesting to get into Shizuru's head, though. I plan on getting into Natsuki's next time if I can, and I'm kinda curious to know what it is that Shizuru is talking about with Reito. Hopefully you're as curious as I am!


	19. 17: Firefly

A/N:

Reviewer's corner:

Thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter! Kryssa's Flute, Interstate405, fan-rei, xSojix, and Eagle8819! Ooh-friggin-rah! applauds

Congrats to Kryssa's Flute for guessing correctly the two videogame references from last chapter: Silent Hill 2 (James Sunderland) and Silent Hill 4 (Harry Townsend Henry Townshend). You get a gold star!

Go on, take your gold star! You deserved it after a hard day's work!

What? Pay? Pft. You have a gold star, that should hold you over. See? It's even gold! I don't care if it's PAPER. Money's paper too, yanno? And this paper is GOLD.

…anyway.

Welcome to finals week. This is probably extra-late, and I blame finals. But hell, that's the end for the fucking YEAR. Hot shit.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sunrise or HiME, but I do know that this chapter was certainly a bouken, desho desho?

…I don't own Haruhi Suzumiya, either. You can read the chapter now.

* * *

_You / my friend / you're a lot like them / but I cut your line / and you know I did / now I'm lost in you / like I always do / and I'd die to win / but I'm born to lose_

_Firefly / could you shed your light?_

* * *

Chapter 17

Firefly

Midori frowned at Natsuki from a distance as Shizuru left her, behind Reito. Frowned at the way Natsuki's eye followed Shizuru, the way her head tilted, only slightly, so that she could see just a little bit farther. Frowned at the way she didn't say a word. Only nodded faux-absently as Shizuru said, _Natsuki, I'm going for a while. _ She wasn't really absent at all.

Midori saw it in her eyes: What she_ was _was distressed. She had been staring out at the ocean for as long as Midori had been chancing glances in their direction, which had been about ten minutes, since she had started chatting animatedly with Chie. To be honest, she hadn't been paying attention to what the younger girl had been talking about at all, nor had she been minding what she'd been saying back. For all she knew, she had just admitted a deep, impossibly faithful admiration for the Scottish bagpipe. Or Minoru.

She noticed that she hadn't frowned at Reito leaving with Shizuru. Maybe this was because she wasn't as fond of him as she'd previously thought, but she doubted it. More likely, it was because she had a feeling that she'd confirmed Shizuru's love interests; most specifically, how they had nothing to do with Reito, or really, any males at all.

_After all, _she rationalized, _those two had been touted back at school as _the greatest couple in the history of Fuuka Academy, _if I remember right, which means that they've probably never so much as brushed hands. _Kids could be stupid. Rumors could be stupider, and neither had a tendency to be accurate about much of anything. _But still, they obviously talk. Which means that Reito probably knows about Natsuki, if anybody does. Right? _

"--bladder. Don't you?"

Midori blinked. Hard. "What?"

Chie grinned at her impishly. "You haven't been paying attention, have you?" she said. Her tone was smooth and wry, matching her expression. "Off staring into space? Or, more particularly, staring into _his _space." She indicated the cabin where Reito had gone. Midori might have marveled at the girl's acumen, but for the fact that she _had _been fairly indiscreet about the whole thing.

Aoi, standing next to Chie, smiled only mildly less coltishly. "If I were you," she said, and then looked at Chie, as if waiting for some sort of signal to continue. Chie nodded at her, and she did: "I wouldn't worry about the two of them. I don't think they have any more between them than friendship."

There was a twinge in her voice when she said it that somebody less perceptive than Midori wouldn't have caught. "Who said I was worrying?" she said without thinking about it.

Aoi and Chie only grinned at this. Their grins were identical now, which Midori found just a little creepy.

"Well," Chie said. "Since obviously you _weren't _worrying about it, I guess I'll have to find somebody else to tell my story to."

Midori frowned, said nothing.

"Which story is that, oh wise teacher?" Aoi said, her voice _faux-_gushy.

"Oh, it's nothing special," Chie mock-sighed. "Only a story of love, heartbreak, of tragic romance."

"Wait," Aoi frowned. "Really?"

"Absolutely not." Chie peered with one eye at Midori, who feigned disinterest. Or maybe she wasn't faking it. Chie couldn't tell. "And that's what makes the story so interesting."

_What am I, fifteen? _Midori thought, a little irate at the act, which Aoi and Chie were clearly enjoying. "I think I'll pass," Midori said with a fake yawn, and then turned and walked away, leaving Chie and Aoi thoroughly satisfied with themselves.

_Those two… _Midori frowned. _They could have just told me outright, rather than trying to pester me with it. _ But she had gotten the message pretty clearly, more or less confirming what she already knew. _I guess that's just kids for you._

She could only really say that because she had never participated in gossip herself as a highschooler, and when questioned about her own love interests for the gossip, or even really just out of curiosity, she tended to invoke the _right of silence _technique. In fact, she tended to do that when she was questioned in general. She couldn't ever remember a time in her life when she had been unfailingly open and honest to anybody.

Even Youko, with whom she was the most direct and uninhibited of all of her friends, didn't get the _whole _Midori. Nobody really did; different people got different pieces of her, and she supposed that if they were to all confer and swap what they knew about her, they'd get a pretty thorough picture. Even then, though, there were a few things that she kept firmly to herself; who didn't have those things? It was natural, right?

_And one less now, _she thought, mildly annoyed, resisting the urge to throw a glance over her shoulder at Chie. _So I get curious sometimes, just like everybody else. So sue me._

She continued walking until she reached Natsuki, who appeared utterly lost in thought, staring off at the ocean, but who she was quite certain was fully attentive, and had been since Midori had stepped within earshot.

_It's the eyes. Her eyes are always alert. _

"Oi! Natsuki!" she called out when she thought she was close enough. She raised her hand and grinned, something that she had found was typically contagious, and a good way to begin a conversation.

Apparently, not with Natsuki Kuga, who barely looked up. This, Midori would later realize, was actually an improvement for Natsuki, who, during her time as a HiME, probably wouldn't have bothered to acknowledge her.

Midori took with a grin and, when she was only a few feet away from Natsuki, tried again. "Natsuki? You in there?"

Natsuki whispered something that sounded an awful lot like _piss off_, and Midori stopped, frowning at her, torn between concern and offense; like a mother whose child has, in the same breath, disowned her and cried out for help; two things which did not often come without the other.

There was silence between them, and suddenly, it seemed as though everybody on the beach was watching them in utterly transfixed paralysis. Midori actually chanced a glance around, and nobody was. It was like somebody had muted life for her.

Chie was sitting on the sand, on top of a towel, smiling and moving her mouth at Aoi, one hand in the air, motioning to emphasize the point that her mouth was desperately trying to make.

Mai was running after Mikoto and Yuuichi, miming play-rage at what, in some alternate reality where sound was included with the package, may have been the first alliance between the latter pair for the purposes of tormenting Mai.

Kazuya and Akane were making out behind a rock in the distance. Perhaps the one set that was the same, sound or no. Midori actually felt a pang in her chest upon seeing them; something she hadn't felt in a long time. How long had it been since she got to do something like that? Since the person she did that with had been

_torn from me_

Midori shook her head, and the pang passed, as they always did. This wasn't the first time she had experienced life on _mute. _Not in the least. Her brain seemed to naturally block things out when it noticed something that her eyes didn't.

_or when it knows what is about to_

midori i think im in love with you

Natsuki's eyes were wet, shining as the sun hit them, reflecting the ocean back at itself. In her eyes, the ocean didn't move, but rather the world moved around it and it remained still, as though she were Perseus reflecting the Medusa in the shield around her eyes.

_No, that's not right. If her shield were useful, her eyes wouldn't be like this. _Midori didn't know how else to put it; she shifted uncomfortably on her back foot as the world shifted its volume, equally uncomfortably, back to normal. _I've never seen her like this. Hell, I've never seen her like _anything _except cool and detached, save for one particularly embarrassing moment at the first and only meeting of the HiME Rangers. What is this? I don't …_

She didn't want to admit it, but she didn't know what to do. The last person that had broken down even _near _her had been in her class, begging her not to make him repeat the course for his shitty grade. She had told him to do better next time. That wasn't an option this time.

She tried to reach out to Natsuki, but found herself faltering, almost before she started. _What, do I just put my hand on her shoulder and tell her to buck up like I used to do? I can't really say that anymore. I lost my right to tell other people to buck up when I failed to do it after_  
that was different  
_How do you know?_

_Wouldn't you want somebody to talk to you if you were sad?_

Midori opened her mouth again, but this time it was_ her _that had been muted; her voice worked fine, nothing choked in her throat, but her head refused to move. It had suddenly fixated on an image that had burned itself into her brain months ago—her first time home since he had died:  
_the door to the apartment opens  
everything is exactly the same as it was before  
nothings changed except me im still living in fucking squalor only now its only my squalor  
i walk and fling my coat down on the table and something falls off  
a small folder with his name scribbled on the front  
his work notebook the one he had used before we left to prepare  
for just a second i dont notice the little picture of me clipped onto the side  
_  
All she could see in that moment was the folder. Faded blue, heavily worn, with coffee stains on a few of the pages, his name was scribbled onto the little white margin in black ink that had bled a little bit off, giving his kanji a vaguely drunken appearance.

And there she stayed; in that room, seeing nothing of Natsuki, her hand just outstretched, her mouth hanging open in mid-syllable.

* * *

Minoru felt like an awkward teenager for just a moment; the girl with the funny-looking hair that was huddled in the bushes behind the cabin had started to cry softly; it was a small, pathetic sound that tugged at his heart more than anything had in a long time. He had always disliked young kids, and maybe that was why. 

_Only you're not 16 anymore. If only, right? Then you could probably feel a little better about being stuck in the middle of a bunch of teenage girls. But you're not. _

That didn't mean he was any better at dealing with crying girls, nor did it mean that he had any more desire to. He found his feet beginning to carry him away from his spot as his mind told his heart, which protested only a little, _she doesn't know you, and you probably wouldn't be able to sympathize anyway. _

He couldn't really argue with that. If he knew teenagers—and he didn't, but he was one of the rare adults who still had a fairly vivid grasp on his own teen years—the girl would, with a little coercion, tell him everything on her mind.

Probably it was something to do with a boy; maybe even one of the boys here. In fact, it was probably the one he'd seen earlier with the dorky spike-cut; (_Spikes,_ Minoru thought on a whim, and grinned) he knew the faces of all three of the boys there from when he'd been staring at their camp through a sniper rifle (something that, he suddenly felt, had been years ago, in another age. He wasn't sure why) and of the three, Spikes seemed the only logical choice: Reito, the one who had helped the girl Midori to fix his wrist, seemed too old (he had said something about a university), and the boy with the brown hair had been pretty consistently chin-deep in his girlfriend's throat, so he was probably out, unless he was looking for some sausage on the side. (This, given the shape of the girl's hair, seemed an oddly appropriate analogy). Minoru found this possible, but fairly unlikely, just given what seemed to be their constant proximity to one another. Stranger things had happened, though.

After the girl broke down and told all her horrible, life-wrecking problems,_ that _would be where the problem came. The true burden of the old, Minoru knew fairly well, was that they had been through enough relationships in their lifetimes; seen enough bad shit happen to other people, and experienced it themselves, that they found it near-nigh impossible to sympathize with the seemingly insignificant angst of the young. It was a loss of innocence, to some extent; when one's personal issues began to take a backseat to more immediate things: Worrying about where to live; worrying about how to eat; worrying about making the next car payment. Or, in Minoru's case, worrying about a bush twenty meters away, and whether or not there was somebody inside of it, waiting to pop out and gut him. He didn't have that specific problem at the moment, but it was a common one for him. He had long since gotten used to just putting a bullet it every suspicious-looking bush he found.

So she would bare her soul to him, and he wouldn't really sympathize. And then what? There was no _and then_. Then he would pat her on the head, and tell her she'd get by somehow, and leave, because he couldn't muster enough sympathy inside of him to say anything more reassuring. Or, heaven forbid, actually give a shit; by Minoru's thinking, that would be even worse than pretending to care, for both of them.

So he allowed his legs to carry him. For a few seconds, even, his entire body agreed with him, and while he felt a little bad about the whole thing, he was able to at least tell himself that she probably wouldn't want to talk to him anyway—_hell, most people don't like to talk to strangers when they're that bad, right? _

Yes, that was right. His earlier estimation that she would just spill her guts, that wasn't right, was it? Right?

_Right?_

Strangely enough, it was the girl that spoke first, her small, squeaky voice shaky and uncertain: "Who are you?"

Minoru frowned and glanced back at her. He was less than two feet from the corner of the cabin; he could be out of sight before she could catch him.

_And then you would have just run away from a kid who couldn't be more than thirteen, crying and scared. _

_Wouldn't that make you a hypocrite?_

Minoru didn't want to think about that. Everybody had things that they didn't think about; this was his.

So instead, he turned around and smiled his biggest _don't-be-afraid-I'm-just-a-nice-man _smile. "Minoru," he said. "Minoru Alder. Your friends…" _knocked me out and dragged me into a van where I nearly broke my wrist._ "Know me."

"You're the guy who was in the trunk," she said quietly, uncurling herself from the near-fetal position she had been in just previously. "I remember you."

Minoru frowned. When he had first been extracted from that miniature, wrist-destroying purgatory, he had been treated to a view of what he had _thought _was everybody in the group, save for the two girls, Natsuki and Shizuru, who seemed to be angsting at each other or whatever it was they were doing. He didn't remember her, though come to think of it, he _had _seen her through his scope earlier.

Not that he was about to admit that.

"Yeah, I was." He waited for it; the inevitable, obvious, burning question: _And what, exactly, were you doing in our trunk?_

It didn't come, and he wondered briefly how she could go without asking.

_Probably the same way you can go without asking her what the matter is._

They stood there in silence for a moment. Minoru didn't bother to pretend not to notice as she dried her tears; that was rather childish. Rather, he let her dry her tears without feeling pressured one way or another; when she was done, Minoru said, "You know, everybody else is out on the beach."

"I don't really want to go with them."

Minoru smiled at that. "Yeah," he said. "Me either." He felt like a father talking to his child for a moment; _yeah, me either, grin grin pat-on-the-head, say, let's go get some ice cream. _

"Do you want to go for a walk?" Her question was sudden; it looked as though she had barely considered it before she asked.

He frowned at this. His pistol was on his hip, but the woods weren't safe, and pistols were rarely effective against people with big rifles in trees. "I don't really think that's a good—"

"Okay then. It was good to meet you, Minoru Alder." She started to walk away, and for the first time in quite a while, Minoru panicked a little.

"Hey!" he half-shouted as he started after her. "It's—" _dangerous, because in spite of all your boy-angst, there are worse things in life than not getting in some boy's pants, and I guarantee you that getting shot through the chest with a hollow-tipped bullet is one of them._

"Dangerous because there're animals, like wolves and things. Right?"

Minoru frowned. That lie would serve as well as any. "Yeah. It gets dangerous out after dark, and neither of us have a flashlight."

"You do." She pointed at his shirt, and he frowned; she was right. He was wearing the shirt he had been wearing while he was sniping, and it had a flashlight in it. Just in case. "So come with me if it's so dangerous."

"You shouldn't go," he frowned. "It really is dangerous."

"I'm going."

She started to walk, and he cursed silently. _Listen to me, dammit, _he thought. _Aren't I supposed to be the adult? The one who knows what he's talking about?_

_Kids are rarely swayed by logic as feeble as that. _

And with that, he started after her, reaching his hand up under his shirt to his armpit, making damn sure his pistol was still in there tight, every instinct in his body screaming at him to just let her the fuck go, dammit. _Let her the fuck go._

He didn't. It probably saved her life.

* * *

There wasn't actually any tea inside the cabin; the only way to heat up water out there was a fire, and a fire required a beach. Or, rather, it required, as a place to place the tinder, something that was not itself tinder, such as the wooden cabin. Shizuru didn't bother to apologize to him. Reito hadn't been expecting tea. 

He also hadn't been expecting open, frank conversation, but, contrary to his expectation, the evening's chat would turn out to be remarkably open considering that most of his words with Shizuru were rarely unguarded or unveiled. It was just their way together. "It's a lovely evening, isn't it?" Shizuru said.

"Considering that," Reito replied, feeling somehow less patient than he used to be with Shizuru's unwillingness to speak, "you seemed remarkably unwilling to pay much attention to it." Perhaps it was this initial, unusual display of impatience which coerced Shizuru into speaking more openly to him. Maybe it was the urgency with which she felt the need to speak with Reito tonight. Reito, who, in spite of her veiled words and half-formed suggestions, she trusted implicitly.

Shizuru didn't reply immediately. She sat down on the front of her calves and looked at him as he did the same, placing himself directly in front of her. "You're certainly directing your attentions in an unexpected direction tonight, as well."

Reito smiled a little, unfazed. "I didn't say that your focus was unexpected," he said, and then, more quietly, as though to hide the fact that he was speaking frankly at all, "There's no need to be defensive, Shizuru. I'm here to help you."

Shizuru managed a half-smile. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I've had a bit of a stressful day, I suppose."

"Should I ask you how you are after the incident in Goza?" he asked this because he knew that she was probably alright.

_No, _she wanted to say. _No, I'm fine. Simply shaken, and a little bruised on my wrists, but it was overall nothing important. I've been through worse, after all. _"I saw Natsuki kill a man." Maybe she was a little more shaken than she'd expected.

"But that's not what stuck with you," he said, and she nodded her reluctant agreement. "Maybe it's not written on your face, but it's still obvious."

"Only to you," Shizuru smiled, and for just the barest moment, Reito felt something very much like affection in her voice. It was gone from the air it had moved the instant after he noticed, though, which led him to question whether it was ever there at all.

"And to Natsuki."

"And to Natsuki." It sounded almost like a toast. _And to Natsuki! Who notices that I keep my heart in my pocket, rather than on my sleeve!_

A toast, indeed.

* * *

A/N: 

I'll conclude their conversation at the start of chapter 18, worry not. I'm cutting them off here sort of deliberately. Also, it seems like I never did find time to talk to Natsuki. Again, next chapter; I didn't expect Minoru and Midori to take up quite so much space.

Until then, thanks for reading, as always! If you liked it, or even if you didn't, think about dropping me a review! Reviews are food for a writer. Except I don't get full from them in, you know, my stomach. (A warning to all authors: Don't try to live off of reviews alone. You need food, too.)


	20. 18: Unforgiven

No author's notes this time, folks. Between working, getting my wisdom teeth pulled, personal issues and getting hit by a truck, writing is becoming something I have less and less time to do; you have my deepest apologies for this, but I _will _finish this story eventually. Promise.

* * *

_So I dub thee unforgiven_

* * *

Chapter 18

Unforgiven

The "toast" between Shizuru and Reito lasted only a moment, but a silence which seemed to emanate directly from it lasted much longer. Uncertain and yet strangely peaceful, the silence danced coyly between awkward and comfortable with the fluid grace of an acrobat; at least, this was how Shizuru observed it. She thought that perhaps Reito might agree with her, but at the same time, she couldn't be certain that Reito was paying any attention to the silence that had appeared so suddenly. Perhaps he _was, _in fact, simply studying the floorboards as he sat comfortably on his calves with his head bowed.

_Or maybe he has other places—other people—on his mind. He can hardly be blamed for that. _But Shizuru knew that wasn't right either; even when he was knee-deep in an endeavor, Reito was always adept at focusing on whatever was directly in front of him, to the exclusion of all else if necessary. It was the mark of a man possessed of extraordinary discretion.

In actuality, the silence between them, Shizuru realized, was nothing more than Reito waiting for her to speak. Anything he said at this point would be utterly pointless until he had something to speak to her _about; _so he waited. _Discretion. _

So Shizuru pondered what precisely she wanted to say. She had been the one to direct them inside the cabin like this, but now she wasn't entirely sure what she had done it for.

_To talk to Reito._

_To talk to him about what? About me? About Natsuki? _

_Why would I invite Reito in here to talk to him about myself? It seems to me like Reito would sooner talk about himself than me, and he has never talked about himself to me. Or, really, to anyone. _

A little niggle in the back of Shizuru's head, cold and impassive, said,_ And who does _that _remind you of? _The voice was gentle and soft-spoken, much like Shizuru herself, but it possessed a slightly more graceful, groomed quality to it than Shizuru's. _Isn't this the same thing that happens every time you try to talk? You float around each other like matching ballet dancers with matching butcher's knives._

Shizuru, however, didn't need her mother's voice to tell her that she and Reito would not be a well-matched pair of lovers. Not now, not from the woman who, less than three weeks ago, had said to her face precisely the opposite.

Perhaps it was the appearance of her mother's voice that spurred her mouth into action. Maybe it was that little rebellious tick in the very back of her head, the one that is possessed by every child to some degree or another. The one that Shizuru's mother, and then Shizuru herself, had squashed mercilessly at every corner, _as should be done with every child of good breeding.  
good breeding.  
fuck you and your_

"How much do you remember from the HiME carnival?" Shizuru said, and then placed that little tick in her head back inside its box.

Reito had been prepared for any number of conversational topics from Shizuru; from the weather, to what sort of tea he preferred, to his feelings on her potentially devastating, possibly one-sided, absolutely forbidden romance with Natsuki Kuga. What he had not been prepared for was a question about himself.

Specifically, not about  
_him_  
that. That _thing _that had been  
_yourself_  
in his head.

So if it was possible to take Reito off-guard, Shizuru had done it with her question.

_And now you have to answer, which means you have to decide what exactly the answer is._ Easier said than done.

So Reito spoke slowly, for fear of tripping up and saying something _(about how conscious you actually were)_that he didn't want to say. "I remember some things. More from earlier in the year, before …before whatever happened started to really happen." It was a nice euphemism for _before everybody started killing each other_,really. "I saw outside of myself more than I saw inside of myself most of the time."

The edge of Shizuru's lip curled in to a frown, but she said nothing.

_You saw outside of yourself because that …thing didn't keep you locked up inside of yourself. He kept you in a box in his pocket. But he kept the key to the box, too. _"I caught snippets here and there of the things that were happening to you. I knew who died, and when they died." _And you knew how they died, and how many of their deaths _you _ordered. _

This was obviously trying for Reito, Shizuru thought. _It's also not fair. Get on with your point._

"Do you remember how I died?" _It feels strange to say that._

_Of course it would._

"I do."

"How much of it?"

_Enough to remember watching you vanishing in Natsuki's arms, and enough to remember screaming for the first time inside that cage. _

Rather than saying all of this, Reito forced a smile onto his face, pulling his mood forcefully out of the valley it was threatening to slip into. "Enough to know that it's a bit too unpleasant for a conversation over tea, don't you think?" Completely out of habit, he reached down in front of him for his teacup, craving a sip of something to relax him. _And lacking anything stronger._

There was, of course, nothing in front of him, so his hand grasped nothing but air; confused, his hand attempted to grasp the teacup again, unable to pick up on that there _was _no teacup there; they were _not _having conversation over tea, and there _was _no subject too unpleasant for them to speak on. There were only the subjects too painful to think about; the kind that made Reito want to shake his head in frustration every time he did. Shake it and shake it and shake it until his head was clear and

_the cage _

his thoughts went away or his neck snapped and he didn't have to worry about a goddamn thing anymore.

Shizuru frowned at Reito, who shook his head for a moment, sharp and violent, seemingly without warning; it wasn't an atypical action for a normal person. A normal person might be thinking of something unpleasant or especially nagging, and a little burst of wind about the ears might help jolt them to their right minds.

Reito was different, though. Of all of the people Shizuru had met, all of the little insignificant people that she had smiled at, shaken hands with, greeted formally; all of the people that her mother had told her about, introduced her to, and even—sometimes less subtly than others—forced her to court; of all of these people, Reito was the most controlled. The most self-contained, self-sufficient, self-reliant. The only one who never, _ever _slipped. Even Shizuru could slip

_and fall on someone else's head_

now and again. Once in recent memory. Perhaps twice more if she dug back deep enough.

Not Reito.

Not ever.

And yet here he was, doing just that. Slipping. What did that mean? Had something disturbed him, hurt him, fazed him that badly? What could possibly—

"I believe we were talking about you, in any case." Reito's voice did what it so often did, and interrupted her thoughts just before they went off of the deep end.

"Were we?" Shizuru said less coldly than she had, perhaps, intended. "I was under the impression that we were here for tea."

"I believe that the tea must be postponed for the time being," Reito said. "While I would never, by my own devices, miss out on a chance to sample your delicious tea, I would prefer that we not use the place in which we plan to sleep as tinder with which to prepare it." His voice was formal, teasing; it was as it usually was. He had regained himself, something which Shizuru had yet to do.

Shizuru nodded pleasantly at him, allowing herself to regress into formality alongside of his own. As she did this, she realized for the first time in a very long time, by the pangs in her stomach and the niggling at the back of her head, that this bothered her; that she _wanted _to talk to Reito and that by doing this, by dropping back into the old routines, she was cutting off that chance. The wonderful and terrible thing about formality and politeness is that you could use it to speak volumes to a single person, a crowded auditorium, or any group in between, and not actually _say _a single thing to them. And not one of them might notice.

So, for the first time in a long time, Shizuru spoke to Reito directly. "No. I don't want to go back to that. I would like to talk to you; I'm sorry for acting stubborn."

Still, no reaction from Reito, but Shizuru could tell she had fazed him anyway. Maybe it was the lack of an immediate, clever riposte; maybe it was the eye contact he made. It was something; she had surprised and disarmed him, and it felt  
_damn good_  
different.

Slowly, Reito smiled. "All right, then. What would you like to talk about?" The infernal question; that one, impossible, irrefutable question. _What would you like to talk about?_

_Well, if I knew that, I'd have begun talking about it already, wouldn't I have?_

_But it's still a perfectly valid question._

"Natsuki." It came out as she considered this infernal question, apparently not so diabolical after all.

"What about her?" Reito asked his question as all great speakers asked their questions: Fully aware of the answer, yet possessed of an attitude that suggested precisely the opposite. Sometimes that was what confused people really needed; not deep, sentimental questions, but somebody who would simply ask them about what they _thought _they already knew. This was something Reito understood better than most. "What about Natsuki do you need to talk about?"

_That I'm in…_

"Is it that you're in love with her? Is that it, or is there more to it than that?"

_Of course there's more to it than that. How could you even think…_

"There is," Shizuru said calmly, not understanding where Reito was going and not entirely willing to go along with him.

"Is there?" Reito asked. "Is there anything more that you could add to that statement that wouldn't fall into the realm of romantic hyperbolae?" Reito allowed Shizuru about three seconds to answer, and then continued, "_should _there be anything more you can add to that? Should you really have to say anything more than, _I love you, Natsuki_?"

Another moment, and Reito smiled at her with that irritating, infuriating, amazing little knowing smile of his. "Doesn't anything more than that tread a little close to obsession, Shizuru?"

_Obsession is a dangerous thing, Shizuru._

Shizuru finally remembered who had said that to her: It had been Reito. How could she have not remembered that?

_Because I wanted to forget it. Because I had wanted to ignore that person. I had wanted to ignore Reito, and he let me, because he knew it wouldn't do any good to press the issue, not back then. _

_Will it now?_

"Of course," she said calmly, her hand desperately demanding a teacup to clutch, her lips craving a taste of the hot drink to calm them. To allow her some degree of  
_escape_  
certainty. "You're right. Of course you are."

Reito nodded at her, his sharp eyes watching her as carefully as a psychologist's. Or a police interrogator's. The trouble was, he didn't know where to go from here. She had said it, and that alone would have earned him his day's wages _had _he been a psychologist or an interrogator, but he was neither, and he was getting no wages out of this. She had said it, and maybe she had even believed it, but that meant nothing if it didn't help her, and hammering the point home would get him nowhere.

What he had to do now was wait for Shizuru.

He didn't have to wait long. "I'm sorry," she said in the only tone of voice she was capable of apologizing sincerely in: A quiet one. "You've told me this once before, and I ignored you. I'm sorry."

This surprised Reito, but not nearly as much as the rest of the day would surprise him.

He stood and grinned down at her, offering her his hand. "Apology accepted," he said cheerfully.

Shizuru looked up at him for a moment, not entirely sure how to feel about this, and then took the hand and allowed him to help her up. A gentleman's move, with a gentleman's touch; he did not jerk her into himself, nor did he simply use his hand as a rope, but rather, he pulled as much as she did, allowing her to stand up gracefully, and with a minimum amount of effort.

"Thank you," she said quietly—again, the only way she knew how to be this sincere with a man. Perhaps it was simply the only way to be sincere with a man like Reito. _I'll probably never know for sure._

He exited before her, primarily because he actually had someplace he wanted to be, but also because he knew she wanted a bit of time to think.

She would find out later that day just how close to the truth this thought of hers was. One of the effects of this would be that she would forevermore hesitate to use the word _never._

This was probably wise.

* * *

Midori was waiting for Reito as he exited the cabin. Her face was dead-set and calm, as was Reito's, though his step revealed as much of his grin as his face could. Her sudden appearance didn't seem to faze Reito, though he was, indeed, surprised. He didn't say anything; it wasn't polite to ask a lady what it was that she was doing somewhere; a lady would make it known without any help. 

_Ah, the age of the liberated gentlemen, gently pushed into being by the liberated women of the day._

"I couldn't get a word out of Natsuki, so I figured I'd try Shizuru instead," Midori said. "Neither of them have said more than a couple words since we got back from Goza, to each other or anybody else."

"And you were, naturally, worried about them, were you?" Reito didn't believe it for more than a couple instants, but he did give Midori credit for those instants.

"I was." Her voice was genuine, as were her eyes._ Perhaps Midori deserves more credit than I give her._

Or perhaps, something Reito had yet to consider, he simply gave himself too much credit.

"She's inside," Reito said, acknowledging Midori's victory by not saying anything about it whatsoever. "Though I believe she needs privacy right now more than she needs a teacher."

"It's nice that you believe that," Midori snapped without meaning to. "But you're not her teacher."

"Neither are you." Reito hadn't been defensive in a long time, but he was now, and he had no real idea why. "She goes to a university now, which makes you her upperclassman."

"Which affords me about twice the_ teaching _privilege that it affords you."

_Why are you so angry?_

Reito, taken aback by Midori's harshness, had to remain silent for several seconds to avoid shooting an insult back at her, something he hadn't had to do for a long time.

_Nobody has questioned you like this in a long time, either. _The two had more to do with each other than he understood.

"Very well," Reito said quietly. "She awaits your infinite wisdom." He gave a mock-bow and retreated towards the ocean. As he did and Midori vanished from view, he found his heart pumping and his mind reeling from the sudden, unexpected, undesired conflict.

Midori was reeling as much as Reito was; she herself didn't entirely understand why she had been so suddenly hostile when a simple smile and a few gilded words would have sufficed _to stroke the bastard's ego enough to make him fucking move for me._

While she considered this, another bastard was having his own ego stroked.

This latter bastard would cause considerably more trouble than Reito, who would undoubtedly come around in time.

* * *

_This plan, _they had said, _is so near to genius that I find it utterly preposterous, and we cannot throw our support behind it—not until its preposterousness is shown to be…_

To be something they would never admit to—a mistake. They had made many mistakes, but he had made none. Not yet, anyway; he wasn't stupid enough to discount the possibility, nor was he stupid enough to cover for it in the event that he had made one.

_If I have made a mistake, it can be explained to the press. If my _men _make a mistake…_then _I am in trouble. _

That was, of course, why he had needed so much money. The more you paid a man, the fewer mistakes he was likely to make.

And the more likely he was to cut and run, like that bastard…what had his name been? Alder? Something like that.

No matter. The problem would be resolved shortly.

Very shortly.

"You may commence," he said into his small comlink.

Now it was only a waiting game. Operations rarely began with a rush, but his operations also rarely ended in defeat.

* * *

Woods were a lot of things to Minoru, most important thing they were right now, he understood almost as soon as he passed the first line of trees, walking slightly in front of the girl, Shiho, were dangerous. 

Wild animals were the least of his worries. He kept his hand close to his gun, wishing desperately for his backpack and his sniper rifle; _those _would have made him, at least, feel better.

"You seem nervous," Shiho remarked from behind him. "There aren't _really _that many animals in the forest here, and they're as afraid of us as we are of them."

The way she said it was at least mildly infuriating to Minoru, but he suppressed his urge to snap back. _She's thirteen, Minoru. Fourteen, tops. You know how they are._

Or at least, he thought he did.

"Yeah," he nodded, not easing his hand away from his weapon for an instant. "You're right, of course. I'm just edgy is all. It comes with the territory." He regretted saying this in his subsequent breath; he was, in fact, used to saying it to women, but the women were typically older and a lot more naked than Shiho.

"What territory is that?" she asked, her voice not so much curious as wry. "Are you a hunter or something? I thought that was illegal." Wry or knowing. Neither made him particularly comfortable.

"Mmm...," Minoru said cleverly as his mind reeled, reaching out in every direction at once for something to say to quell Shiho's curiosity. Something that _didn't _involve the numerous illegal activities that he actually _did _participate in. _Oh, I'm a hunter of sorts. I just hunt the _gag _most dangerous prey of all _gag.

_And what would that be, Minoru?_

_Oh. Um. Whales. You know, Ahab got his ass pretty well handed to him by one of those. You gotta watch your back around them whales, you do. _

Yeah. Right. With a great, powerful effort, he forced calm on himself, and began to relax.

Then something dropped next to him, and he drew on it and nearly put three bullets into his old backpack which held his old sniper rifle. It had a small note taped to it; he holstered his gun as Shiho stared at him in awestruck silence, and grabbed the backpack, ripping the small note off and reading it to himself.

_You'll need it soon. Keep her with you. It's the safest place for now. –Akira_

_Oh, shit. _


	21. 19: Sooner or Later

Akira grimaced as she swung down from the tree and landed on the bear's back, crushing its delicate spine with a sickening _crunch. _As she landed, she bent her knees to absorb the impact, though it wasn't really necessary; the layer of fur and fat that violently collapsed on itself, shedding blood in a hundred places as the bear gave off a last, dying roar was sufficient.

As she wiped a layer of blood off her brow, shielded in part by the black cloth of her hood, Akira thought, _parts of this chapter may be considered violent or cruel. _

* * *

_Just call my name / you'll be okay / your scream is burning through my veins _

_Sooner or later / you're going to hate it / go ahead and throw your life away_

_

* * *

_

Chapter 19

Sooner or Later

It could have been said that Natsuki Kuga had a hard time coping with certain aspects of life that most people found relatively routine. For example, indecision; a feeling that most people have acquainted themselves with at one point or another, the feeling of being pulled one way by all points of logic but entirely another way by that little voice in the back of your head that says precisely the opposite of what reason tells you, and speaking so convincingly that you can't bring yourself to disregard it. _No, you don't _really _need to eat anything right now, because you're not_ really _in the mood for chicken. Go on, take the last candy. Nobody will miss it, least of all, the person whose name is on it. No, you _should _argue with him. He's an asshole._

Natsuki had a hard time dealing with indecision. Most of the choices she had been presented in her life had been relatively simple: Avenge her mother's death or feel regret for the rest of her life. Kill or die. Fight or fall back.

The _really _hard decisions always had something to do with the only person who had ever put turbulence into her life: Shizuru Fujino. These were the questions that had no immediate answer to her, because she wasn't really even certain what the choices were. What did she want from Shizuru? That depended on what Shizuru wanted from her. What did Shizuru mean to her? That depended on who was asking, and on what day of the astrological calendar they asked on.

These questions had no simple solution in Natsuki's mind, but there was one fairly straightforward fix that she had learned of not long ago to prevent them from overwhelming her consciousness whenever they got too pushy, demanding an answer _now damnit_: To push them aside with all her might, and focus on whatever else was around her.

When she thought about it very closely, there was only one really difficult Shizuru-related decision that she had ever made easily. In Goza, when Shizuru had been kidnapped, the choice had been simple to her: Shizuru had been kidnapped, so Natsuki had to put her own life on the line to rescue her. Fight or flee? Fight. It was usually fight.

Not this time, though. This time, there was no fight. There was no easy fix, and there was no pushing it aside.

Because Shizuru had touched her. And more than that, she had kissed her.

And Natsuki wasn't sure whether she wanted that or not. She had never thought seriously on the matter, simply because she had spent most of that time forcing the thoughts from her head, rather than addressing them.

Because when she didn't,_ this _was what happened.

Blank stare. Inability to respond coherently. If anybody had tried to attack her, they'd have found her reflexes sluggish, at best.

In short, nearly useless. In her own mind, anyway.

In the end, it all boiled down to the fact that she was most comfortable when she was fighting, and that when she wasn't, she didn't know quite what to do with herself. Violence was a drug (see A/N below)—she knew that better than anybody else at that camp, except for possibly Minoru. You could use it to replace parts of your life, but once you got hooked on it, you didn't know how to live without it, and it required many years of rehabilitation to break yourself of the habit, though you never really dropped it altogether.

Maybe that was why the first gunshot that echoed through the forest, over the lake, and into the ears of everybody in the camp was so effective at waking her up: It was like getting her fix; once she got it, she could more or less function again.

The gunshot, a booming, resounding _crack_, turned the heads of everybody at the camp, as loud, unexpected noises are wont to do. It echoed off of the lake so that it seemed to come from everywhere at once, but even so, everybody's head turned to precisely the same point in the woods.

Everybody's but Natsuki's. Natsuki didn't need to look uselessly at an unrevealing line of trees to know that sound; it was a sound she had heard plenty of times before. Just never quite this _big. _She had no idea what kind of gun had just fired, but she was guessing it wasn't legal in _any _country, let alone in Japan, where she could be arrested just for being seen _near _her pistol.

Her pistol, currently inside the cabin, resting comfortably and safely inside her bag.

Inside the cabin.

With Shizuru.

A moment later, she began to register the world again, her indecision shattered by the reintroduction of violence into her life. The first thing she heard was, strangely enough, Yuuichi: "Where's Shiho?" he was asking everybody. She turned her head briefly towards him, and then turned away, regretting it: She hadn't seen a man with so ashen a face since…

_Since a long time ago._

She didn't ponder it further. It bothered her, but what _really _bothered her was the look on Mai's face, next to her. Mai, Natsuki knew, lost no sleep over Shiho by herself—not over the halfway-psychotic girl who had very nearly separated her and Yuuichi on more than one occasion, on quite possibly a permanent basis. Mai was a kind, forgiving person, but kindness only went so far, and typically nowhere near far enough to catch a glimpse of where jealousy ended. Mai's concern for Shiho had, in Natsuki's opinion, a more pragmatic root: Yuuichi still cared very deeply for the misguided little girl, and if she was Tate's concern, then she was, at some level, Mai's concern as well.

What bothered her was really Mai's face.

Torn. One side hurting for Yuuichi, the other for herself; staring halfway between Yuuichi's head and the sunset, with a concerned expression that gave way to hurt eyes, one hand supportively on Yuuichi's shoulder, the other pulled tightly to her stomach.

Torn.

Natsuki's instinct, therefore, pulled her towards her gun, and towards battle. Towards her inevitable route of sacrificing her safety for the sometimes dim hope of securing somebody else's; but there was still that one thing standing between her and her gun; the same thing that stood between her and the rest of the world:

Shizuru. Just the thought of her niggled at Natstuki, rooting her feet to the spot. It would have been easier for Natsuki to shoot her way through a dozen First District soldiers than to walk in there now, to get her gun and do what was necessary. Hell, given the choice, she probably would have opted to take the soldiers bare-handed.

She was also absolutely certain that this information, vital intelligence if ever it existed, could never fall into Shizuru's hands, for fear of her swift, harsh

_Kiyohime._

retribution

_One word should never be able to cause so very much destruction._

Another gunshot. The first she might have been able to explain away as a firecracker, but this one was closer, and punctuated by a sharp, short noise--the unmistakable sound of a human in mortal pain, pleading in a single, unintelligible syllable, for help.

_No. There's another word. _

Natsuki shook her head. No point in thinking about it. Really, that was when she did her best work anyway, was when she didn't bother to think about it. Somewhere deep down inside of her, she had the feeling that this was true of most of the human race.

She gritted her teeth, both figuratively and literally, and started off for the cabin, where that one word awaited her.

* * *

Shiho was on the ground, pressed up against a tree in the fetal position about half a second before the shooting started. She was there because Minoru had told her to be there, and, because she had absolutely no intention of following some stupid paranoid bastard's directions--_and why the hell did I go out into the forest alone with him anyway he's probably some pedophile we picked up by the side of the road_—he had picked her up and plopped her there, and then the shooting had started. 

The only reason he wasn't already dead was that they weren't shooting at him yet. They were shooting at the animals that were more afraid of humans than humans were of them: The bears.

The Japanese brown bear was a fairly large creature; though nowhere near as large as its Alaskan and Canadian cousins, its weight could still top 500 pounds, and it could still rip the head off of a normal human being, gun or no. They weren't dangerous creatures by nature—that is, they didn't actively seek to rip anything off of anybody without provocation, usually involving their young. None of the men up in the trees ever really figured out why it was that the bears attacked them, and even if they had an inkling, they never would have suspected that it had to do with something they couldn't control: Their scent.

They smelled, from their perches up in the trees, harnessed to the thick trunks and buckled down to fire their big, 50 caliber sniper rifles, a little bit like a baby brown bear. But to the bears down below, they looked like big, angry people. Natural assumption: They were hiding the cubs under their shirts.

In fact, they were, to an extent. They all wore identical black undershirts, so that they could identify themselves if need be. All of these black undershirts had been shipped to them in a box made of unimpressive brown cardboard, and all of them had, for about fifteen minutes, fallen into the hands of somebody who supposedly worked for the man with the hoarse voice, but who nobody could ever quite match a name to.

All of them smelled exactly like bear cub. So when, high above them, on the very tops of the trees, Akira squeezed the bear cub just enough to make it squeal—an adorable sound, really; like a stuffed animal—the bears on the ground—usually unseen, foraging or sleeping—reacted as any concerned parents would when they heard their missing child shrill: They started ascending the trees, quickly, preparing to rip the heads off of whoever it was that had their babies.

And the arms, and the legs, and whatever else was necessary.

The bears _really _weren't afraid of them. Minoru got the impression that maybe the old saw was nothing but a myth, and a malicious one, at that.

Minoru could assemble his rifle straight out of his backpack in less than two minutes on his worst day in the field, but today was significantly worse than his worst day on the field. He was stressed, he was directly under enemy fire in the middle of what may as well have been an open field, his hand still ached when he formed a fist, and he had a little girl in his charge. A crying little girl, huddled up against a tree. He practically dumped the contents of the pack onto the ground, but in a moment of clarity, reached out with his bad hand and allowed the packet of pins to fall into his open palm. A tremor of pain shook his hand slightly as he caught it, but he didn't drop it, so he figured it was all right.

_You should have gotten to cover first, jackass._

Now he was sitting in what may as well have been an open field trying desperately to assemble a rifle broken into four pieces that he should probably clean before he fired.

Not that he had enough time for something like that. He would have to rely on Akira and her bunch—_don't worry, buddy, we have _ninja _covering us_, would have been enough to make Minoru seek higher ground and a spotter that wasn't batshit insane—to keep them alive.

Minoru dropped to one knee and quickly counted the parts to his rifle. His brain was still halfway in panic mode—the promise of ninja cover did little to soothe that—so he didn't quite have the acuity to take stock of what he had, but his rifle only had four pieces.

_And a scope._

_Where the hell is your scope?_

Minoru's mind was a grassy field, and a powerful river called _panic _was rapidly eroding it away. Or maybe it was named _insanity._

_You'd have to be nuts to do this job anyway._

_Say your lesson_

His "lesson" was an old rhythmic phrase, the kind of thing you might sing in a first grade classroom. He didn't remember who had taught it to him, but it was calming. It focused his mind, the steady, dull rhythm lulling his frantic mind gently into calmness, readiness. He grabbed the butt-piece of his gun, slid it between his legs, and with his good hand, picked up the bolt-piece.

"The _bolt _takes _stock _of the _butt _of the gun, the _trigger _guarded still," he said quietly, stressing the iambs of the lesson as he quickly forced the bolt action, a long, thin tube that housed the firing mechanism, into the rear half of the weapon, and then connected the trigger mechanism and eased it into the trigger guard. "The _barrel _must go on quite straight, now or you never will." He slid the front half of the gun, primarily the long, silenced barrel, onto the bolt, and then opened his baggie full of pins into his bad hand. Each one thudded onto his hand like a needle, but he didn't drop any of them, and a moment later, he was reaching into his bag for a clip of ammunition, which he slammed home without any caution at all.

He was starting to get better, but a second too late; everybody around him, all of the men and women positioned so obviously and unscrupulously in the trees, either hung from their harnesses and dripped blood to the ground, or lay on the ground, being devoured by the bears, to whom Akira had returned the cub at some point.

Shiho was also looking up, staring straight at the nearest corpse, some poor bastard who had been half-eaten by a bear. All that remained of him now was his torso, still strapped grotesquely to the harness like some unfortunate marionette who'd fallen victim to its puppeteer's drunken rages once too often. His guts lay in a red, lumpy pile at the foot of the tree, and there was a bear just beginning to sniff at it delicately, deciding whether or not it was worth eating.

Minoru knew what Shiho was going through. It was the same thing he'd gone through the first time he'd seen a dead man—a kind of morbid revulsion, fed by a grotesque fascination with the corpse which turned paler by the second, with its lifelessness. She was staring at it, wondering if it was going to move again. A lot of people had trouble comprehending death at this level, young or not. He didn't blame her.

But he did know they needed to get moving. This was possibly the luckiest day of his life—and everybody else's unluckiest—but he didn't think for a second that anybody, even rookies like these had obviously been, would let him sit around in the open, panicking and trying to assemble his gun from scratch on the ground.

His very dirty gun. He wondered if he should chance cleaning it, or chance firing it later, but he knew in an instant that it would be better to move, _now, _while nobody could see him.

He grabbed Shiho's hand, and it seemed to jolt her out of her trance-like state. "Come on," he grunted. "It's not going to move, and we have to go."

She stared blankly, straight at him for a second, and he wondered what was going through her head—was she startled that he had touched her all of a sudden? He knew that junior high girls had freaked out and cried _pervert! _for less than that. Or was she not seeing him at all? Was she still, in her mind, staring at that corpse, still waiting for it to move? A lot of people had that problem, too.

It didn't matter. If he didn't move soon, she wouldn't be staring at anybody at all. These, he knew without much thought, were Scratch-ass's people, and Scratch-ass had money.

And people with money were rarely to be denied, in his experience.

He squeezed Shiho's hand, and said, "Come on. You don't want to end up like them, take my word on that," and then reached down with his bad hand, slid his backpack around his wrist, and took off deeper into the forest, looking for some kind of cover, some good rock formation or group of downed trees that would provide him cover so that he could use his blanket.

He did his best to ignore the nagging question:

_And then what?_

* * *

Shizuru did not meditate. She did not sleep in the vicinity of other people, practice medieval shunning, or ponder the ways of the universe—at least not with her eyes closed. 

Therefore, when Natsuki entered the cabin, quietly but quickly, allowing herself to let the door slam shut only by telling herself forcefully that stealth was _not _an issue but speed was, and heard no response, no call of, _who is it? _or request for privacy, but only the dull, giddy sound of friends talking, even gravely, she was immediately nervous.

She slipped her shoes off at the door without thinking about it, but grimaced as soon as she did—the cabin floors creaked, but worse than that was the shuffling sound her socks made as she walked, even on the balls of her feet (the best way to walk quietly, she'd found) along the grainy wood.

The entryway was dark and a little humid, the light of the day having escaped it as it retreated below the horizon but the heat still holding out a little longer. The wood on the walls seemed to jump out at her a little more than usual—faces made from the lines in the wooded boards seemed to call to her, or curse at her, or perhaps even warn her of something much more sinister than they which waited for her in the next room.

She nodded at them as if to say, _I already know._

The door to the women's room was shut, but there was a small light that flickered and swung at chest height behind the paper door, and from it, Natsuki could just barely make out a female form; seated but still obviously fairly tall, slender, and curved exactly where it needed to be. Without wanting to, Natsuki found herself taking it in, long hair to slender toe, several times. Each time, she felt something deep down inside of her and low, swell and burn a little.

_Is this what hunger is like?_

The form stood, and the light began to swing back and forth, so that at one apex of each swing all shadow vanished and Natsuki stared, for just a moment, at a sheet of paper instead of  
_hunger_  
a woman.

Back and forth. Back and forth. The woman's form seemed to travel along the paper, following the swing of the light, until it vanished and then, a second later, began to travel back towards Natsuki, a maiden torn between her life and her lover.

_Or maybe a warrior torn between life and death._

Back and forth. Back and forth. Her slender body never moved except back and forth, and Natsuki felt herself imagining those curves, carved out of flesh rather than paper, and how they  
_felt.  
back and_  
And then, it wasn't one form which traveled towards Natsuki, but two; the maiden and her father, perhaps, vengeful and protective all at once. Or maybe it was death, finally come for the warrior.

Natsuki's eyes widened and she almost cried out right there, but the smarter half of her mind silenced her.

_Gun._

Maybe not _that _much smarter. She reached for her side, where her gun should have been, and found nothing  
_forth_  
but the cloth of her jeans. She cursed herself a fool and an ass.

_Back and…_

The woman was alone in the room again. Had Natsuki imagined that? Imagined some huge masculine form behind her  
_hunger_  
friend, come to kill her like somebody was going to kill whoever was in the forest?

_The forest._

She didn't have any more time to waste. She swallowed her pride, mastered her shaking hands, and tried really really hard to ignore her  
_hunger_  
fear, and then she reached out, trying not to see the faces in the walls, all screaming at her, _no, don't do it, find another way!_ and opened the door.

She noticed two things about the room immediately. The first was Shizuru. She was  
_beautiful  
hunger_  
staring straight at her in a queer mix of alarm and pleasure, and she was naked. Her skin was  
_as smooth as i imagined_

pale and just slightly orange in the dim light of the lantern, and her slender body was not in the slightest curved away from Natsuki as a woman might naturally do if invaded in such a state.

The second thing she noticed was the man standing behind Shizuru. He had a knife, and he was also staring straight at Natsuki. He didn't dare move.

Natsuki had not the slightest idea whether Shizuru knew of his presence. She also didn't dare move.

Shizuru herself…

Perhaps she simply didn't dare move, for fear that all of this was a dream. Perhaps she knew the man was behind her, and was paralyzed with fear.

Either way, for a minute, the room was the only place in Goza that night that possessed any sort of peace. The bombs which were beginning to erupt in the city that night made sure of that.

* * *

(A/N Below) Natsuki's addicted to rageahol? –Author 

A/N: It seems that Mai has kind of taken a back seat of late. I plan on trying to reintroduce her in the next chapter, to focus on her more, but I do seem to have a few more important things to focus on right now. Sorry to all of you Mai fans out there for her long absence.


	22. 20: Remember

Author's notes

Wow, it's been a while. In the span of time that I've been absent from all of your lives, I've moved back to Uni (boo), gotten a job, and worked on my two other fics. (Fake, and a story in the Evangelion section over at You should check it out when you're bored—it's called _Precipitate, _and it's under this pen name. I think you'll like it, if you like Eva. I'll have it on Effnet in a few weeks, once I have enough chapters written to post them regularly, because frankly, the Eva section here frightens me a little). Now that I'm back at college, I'll be updating all three more frequently.

As always, thanks to all those who reviewed! That anonymous reviewer, Krampus, Hellwolf, xSojix, FishOfNakedness, Kikyo4ever, fan-rei, Hoppy-chan, zky-zephyr and Kryssa's Flute! Ooh-rah.

A lot happens in this chapter, so I apologize in advance for the slightly poor quality of writing. I kind of lose my style when I have a lot of ideas in my head. Were this a novel, I'd go over it for a second draft and touch it up a lot, but I wanted to get this out to you guys as soon as I could. You've waited long enough.

But now, it's back to this story. Let the show begin. Thanks for reading, and thank you all for your continued support. It means a lot to me. Seriously. Thank you all.

And, don't forget to enjoy.

--

_Try to escape / into me_

_--_

Chapter 20

Remember / My letter #5

Mai Tokiha had been many things in the course of her lifetime. Some things she still was, and some she had stopped being long ago. She_ was _still studious. She _was _still hard-working and she _was _still clever, though not subtle. She was _not _still afraid of water. She was _not _still a picky eater—she had left that behind when she learned how to cook. She was _not _still a guilty soul, as she had been.

Maybe not, anyway.

But the biggest thing Mai Tokiha was not was a fool. She had never been a fool, nor would she ever be a fool. Even when she was being foolish, Mai Tokiha was no fool. She could take care of herself, and she knew what she was doing. Maybe that was why she resented the look that Natsuki gave her as Yuuichi frantically asked about Shiho, _had anybody seen her, when was the last time anybody saw her? _The look that Natsuki gave her was something she despised in that secret, dark part of her that she allowed the luxury of hatred.

She was _not _a hateful person. But she _was _somebody who felt the draw of her pride very strongly. So powerful, it was, that for a moment she was tempted to go to Natsuki, to console_ her _for her obviously forlorn look so that maybe she would stop staring at Mai that way.

_Crack._

The gunshot echoed over the water and shut everybody up, the irritating guest nobody invited to a party, clearing the room out in five seconds flat. Nobody moved for a few seconds, and then Chie started to laugh. "Just some stupid kids from the town with their fireworks," she said, waving her hand in front of her face dismissively. "Trying to see if they can get a rise out of the dumb tourists."

Maybe they would have even believed her, if not for the next two gunshots, which echoed more clearly in their ears, punctuating her words as though in direct defiance of some false prophet. The cry of pain at their end, a true believer mourning for his cause.

Everybody froze, nobody quite sure what to say, and tension played across the air like music from an untuned guitar. Nobody corrected Chie in spite of the conclusion drawn across the board; perhaps because none of them were sore winners, but more likely because none of them wanted her to be wrong.

None of them spoke, because nobody knew what to say. They all knew exactly what that noise was, because although some of them had only really heard it for the first time that day, the sound of human suffering was unmistakable. Nothing else came close—not animal pain, the shrill, inarticulate howls of a confused, miserable beast; not angst, the adolescent pain that all of them had, in one form or another, experienced at some point during their high school years. Nothing could compare to the sound of somebody who possessed at least rudimentary language skills reduced to articulating their pain the same as the animals did. Gooseflesh rose immediately on their skin, almost as one.

Out of all of them, it was Midori who reacted first. Maybe because she'd dealt with violent death before on an intimate level _outside _of the HiME festival, or maybe simply because she was older and therefore more mature, or maybe just because out of all of them, she felt that she had the least to lose.

"I'm going to go check it out," she said quietly, all pretense and preamble abandoned; then, after a moment's consideration, "has anybody seen Natsuki?" Even somebody with nothing to lose knew better than to enter a battlefield without decent backup, and out of all of them that had come to the carnival, only Natsuki seemed halfway decent as backup.

_Well, _Midori thought, _Natsuki and that man, Minoru. _But it seemed fairly apparent to her that Minoru was probably at the center of that shit-storm; he seemed to be the root of all of their troubles up to that point, why stop then?

Mai shook her head. She had dealt with death as well as Midori. Lots of it.

Mikoto blinked twice, and then murmured, "Is Mai going with Midori?" almost before Mai had thought of it herself. Suddenly, everybody's attention shifted to Mai, who went a little red in spite of herself.

"Mai," Yuuichi said in a hollow impression of his usual jovial tone. "She's just being a little squirt; you're not, right?" Yuuichi had never called Mikoto a "squirt" before. He had never really called her anything before.

Mai took half a second to make up her mind, but before she could say anything, Midori said, her voice firm and a little overbearing, "No, you're not."

Mai blinked, taken off-guard and momentarily stunned. "I'm not?"

Midori shook her head. "No. If this is…" _men with guns coming to kill us,_ "what we think it is, then we'll need somebody to—"

The first bomb went off then, an enormous, rippling blast from a few miles down the road, in Goza. It destroyed what remained of the burned-out strip mall that had been bombed earlier that day, but nobody was hurt, since it was past dusk and nobody was out. The air seemed to shiver for a few moments afterwards, and in its wake, all heads turned towards Goza. Chie, eyes wide and horrified, began to shake violently, and Aoi took notice almost immediately, taking her hand and squeezing hard, whispering something low and soothing in the girl's ear.

Nobody was hurt by the first bomb, but the second one more than made up for it. The bomb, the police would later discover, was not one but a series of bombs, delivered from a larger submunitions explosive inside of the back of a pickup truck, parked outside the house that Natsuki had earlier laid siege to. The first bomb ripped apart a chunk of the street, but more importantly, sent over two hundred smaller submunitions in all directions. Forty of them pierced the house's exterior and detonated into even smaller explosives, roughly hand-grenade sized, which also spread in all directions, a bit like buckshot. One landed about two meters from the man with the sad eyes, who had let Shizuru walk out of that house not a day ago, resigning himself to a fate something very much like this. The bomb exploded and burned his face and eyes, but it was the second submunition, which lodged itself in his stomach, that killed him.

The house literally collapsed on itself, pierced in so many places, its foundation so weakened, that a child could have toppled it if the force of the blast hadn't.

Four more houses around it, the other four corners of that intersection, suffered similar fates. One boy of fifteen was killed, riding his bicycle back home from the house of a girl who he had been helping study and on whom he harbored a powerful crushed. The largest piece of him anybody ever found was his hand, which had grasped that of the girl momentarily before he left for the night.

Nobody ever figured out how somebody had managed to sneak that much U.S.-bought military grade anti-tank explosive into the country.

None of the kids at Goza knew of these happenings, but as screams and sirens began to rise from the town, carrying surprisingly well in the cool, moist night air and echoing nicely through the forests, it became obvious that they could guess at them.

There was a moment's silence after the first two bombs went off (and about ten minutes before the second two exploded) and then Midori said, "That does it. Mai, get everybody into the house. I'll accompany you that far, because there's…something I should get from in there, but you goddamn keep them there and goddamn keep them safe."

It took Mai a moment to get her thoughts in order well enough to offer a protest. "Midori, no. I should be with you, me and Mikoto, so we can—"

"So you can what? So you can get yourselves shot?"

"I know how to take care of myself," Mai snapped, suddenly angry at being thought of as something weak and helpless, something to be taken care of, not once but _twice _in less than twenty minutes, and by two people who she respected more than anybody. "Don't treat me like a—"

"You don't have a _clue _what you're up against here," Midori said hotly. "Not. A. Clue."

"You don't have any more of an idea than I do," Mai shot back. "And would you stop cutting me—"

This time, it was Mikoto who stopped her midsentence, tugging at her shirt intently.

Mai stopped, and looked down at her. Looked down into the girl's soothing eyes, hard with years of fighting and paranoia but still somehow possessing just that little twinge of childish innocence, of the endearment that one couldn't help but afford to cute little girls. For just that brief moment, Mai marveled, thinking, _this should be the eighth wonder of the world. Mikoto, how did you ever manage…_

"Mai should stay here," Mikoto murmured. "Mai is scared for Shiho, because Yuuichi is scared for Shiho, but Mai can't do anything in there, and nobody else can keep everybody safe." In her voice was not a challenge, nor condescension as one might have when trying to win an argument, but only the utmost confidence; that childish belief that what she said was true because it was about _Mai, _and Mai could do just about anything in the world.

In the face of such faith, such pure, unreserved admiration and need, Mai's anger melted as quickly as it had kindled. She glanced at Yuuichi for a moment, Yuuichi whose eyes were desperate, frightened, and then turned back to Midori and nodded.

"I will."

"Good," Midori said. "Everybody get to the cabin. It's not safe there, but it's safer than anywhere else."

"What about the van?" Reito asked, his voice calm and under control, reassuring as the third bomb exploded and more people died and a few people lived, all without ever knowing why. "We could probably drive somewhere where it's safer and wait for your call."

"No," Midori said. "If they've come for us here, they'll have done something to the van by now, or they'll have somebody watching it."

"Who's to say they don't have somebody watching the cabin?" Reito frowned.

"Nobody," Midori murmured, all-to-aware that he was right. "But we've got nowhere else to go."

Reito nodded solemnly, understanding. "I'll help Mai after I find Kazuya and Akane."

_Heaters to block infra-red sights, and perhaps a circle of power around the cabin to warn you if somebody enters, _something inside of his head said, and he shivered involuntarily. Maybe if not for the latter advice, words from a day long gone, he could have lived with it, but as it was, he knew exactly whose voice that was speaking to him, and he hated it. And himself, for having it.

To escape it, he escaped the group, moving off to look for Kazuya and Akane. He had a rough idea of where they were, and he would have to move quickly.

Midori smiled tightly. _Thank you, professor, _she thought with more than a twinge of pain. _For letting me onto that little trick they've pulled with the van. _Not a car-bomb, of course. You couldn't plant one of those on a car without about an hours' solitary work, and the beach parking lot was anything but solitary, with over thirty occupied cabins stretching down the road. (A few people now were starting to emerge from these cabins, curious but not concerned about the ruckus). Rather, they'd have somebody with a gun either waiting inside of it or just a few cars down. Maybe they would, as somebody had once done to her on one of her adventures with the professor, have people come with nail guns to quickly seal the doors, and simply tow the van away.

_And who are _they? She wondered briefly. She thought for a moment it might be one of the enemies she'd made in Israel, but it occurred to her that not even they would go to such brutal extremes to take revenge on her—because it was, very obviously, (to her, at least) somebody in her group that was being targeted. All of the guns seemed to revolve around them that day.

_Should have asked Minoru when you had the chance; stupid, stupid girl. _

She shook her head, refusing to succumb to those kinds of thoughts, at least right now. There would be plenty of time for self-loathing later; she knew that quite well from her years of bathing in alcohol to keep herself from precisely that.

"Okay. Everyone in the cabin. Can she walk?" She indicated Chie with a nod, and Aoi nodded grimly.

"I think so, but I wouldn't count on her to run," she said quietly. "That thing in Goza hit her pretty hard."

Midori took a moment to marvel at Aoi's quiet strength then; Chie was by and far the more forward, the more vocal of the two, the tougher in a crowd, the more frank in a discussion, but of them, it seemed that Aoi was the one keeping the tempo set, the music going, and anybody from knowing that the conductor had actually died at his podium.

They set off for the cabin together.

--

The seconds inside of the cabin ticked by agonizingly, at least to Natsuki, as the man with the knife attempted to stare Natsuki down. It was pretty obvious to her that he was a little bit afraid, and Natsuki could not for the life of her understand why—it was him that had the knife, him that had the gun at his side. He was large and solidly built, and she had no idea how he had managed to get into the cabin undetected. Shizuru seemed entirely calm; indeed, Natsuki had no idea if she even _knew _there was a man standing behind her; she hadn't seemed (admittedly, Natsuki had only seen her shadow) to react when he appeared. Was there something somebody was missing?

It was possible.

What was more important at that moment was whether or not Natsuki thought she was fast enough to make a play for her gun. It was in her bag, which meant she would have to find a way to get it open before the man gutted Shizuru, which seemed unlikely.

_You could go for him, too. You could take him. _

_Who's to say that? Who's to say he has no backup? Who's to say he's not just going to cut Shizuru's throat the instant you flinch?_

"Is there something wrong, Natsuki?" Shizuru asked gently. "You seem frightened."

_What in the hell is she—_

"You walked in on me at a rather inopportune moment. If you could, perhaps, step outside while I finish…"

Natsuki gaped. _What in the _hell _is she…_

The man glared at Natsuki.

Natsuki did her best to glare back, and then she knew, but she also knew that what Shizuru had in mind wouldn't happen.

Natsuki wouldn't let it, but she couldn't stop it, either.

Not without her bag.

"I'm…very sorry, Shizuru," Natsuki murmured. "I didn't mean—"

"To stare?" Shizuru teased. "You seem to have done a very thorough job of it nonetheless."

In spite of herself, Natsuki couldn't help but notice…

There was, indeed, quite a bit to stare at. No wonder the girls at Fuuka Academy worshipped Shizuru. She was_ perfect_—firm everywhere she should have been firm, pale where she needed to be, dark…

She was only dark in one spot aside from her head.

Natsuki reddened, and then said, her throat fairly well choking, "I just came in to get something out of my bag. I'll—"

"By all means, take it, but then…I'm getting rather cold." Guiltily, Natsuki traced her eyes down Shizuru's slim neck, across her collarbones, and then down…

and it was true. Shizuru _was_ getting cold.

Natsuki stared at her one more time, still slightly disbelieving. _She means to let herself be taken. _

_To protect _me.

She grabbed her bag quickly, her eyes never leaving Shizuru's, and started for the door.

_Fuck that._

In the dim light of the cabin, she could see the man's big arms moving towards Shizuru again. But with

_shizuru_

the pressure gone, Natsuki was able to act again, and quickly. She had the gun out in half a second, and in the light of the cabin, she didn't need to re-enter the room to aim. She aimed for the man's back, where she was certain Shizuru _wasn't, _clicked the safety off, and shot him. The gun gave a single hard report and the man dropped.

Something _clicked, _and it wasn't her, and suddenly Natsuki realized why Shizuru had consented to be taken without a fight. She had less than half a second to drop to the ground, and then a second shot _cracked _from inside the boys' bedroom, through the wall that Yuuichi had pounded in frustration less than a day ago, when their largest worries encompassed who was watching them snog.

Shizuru was out in half a second, a robe thrown half-heartedly about her shoulders, barely covering up

_firm_

what needed covering up, and then the man behind the door opened up with his machine gun. Shizuru flung herself to the ground as soon as the first shot went off, and holes started to appear in the cabin, the sand outside _puffing _as the bullets lodged themselves in the hill. She landed on top of Natsuki, who didn't dare fire back—the only reason they were still alive was that the man didn't know where they were now—he knew where Shizuru had been, though. The wall behind where Shizuru and the man had been standing a moment before was nothing more than a bunch of holes.

It actually took Natsuki a few seconds to realize who had landed on her. She blocked out the feeling of

_warm_

Shizuru's body as best she could. _No distractions. Not now. _

Nobody could fire an automatic weapon for more than a few seconds at a time, though; whoever held the weapon started to burst fire, poking seemingly random holes in the cabin's structure, searching. Natsuki clamped her hand over Shizuru's mouth. Shizuru didn't even try to make a sound, but Natsuki felt better doing it all the same. She began aiming with her gun, trying to pick out the exact source of the shots. Maybe she would have even found it before the man found her.

But before that could happen, several things happened, all at once.

The door opened, revealing the entire group save for Reito, Akane, and Kazuya; Midori, at their head, had about enough time to gasp.

At the same time, Minoru Alder managed to draw a bead on the little fucker with the machine gun, holed up behind a bunch of heavy wooden crates in the boy's room, where he had been laying not half a day ago as Midori fixed his wrist. He had his head in full view through the window—_fucking amateurs are getting easier to kill every year—time was, amateurs had that youthful shit and vigor. _He breathed, once, twice, and the guy still didn't move, so he put a fist-sized hole through his head.

He didn't know it then, but in doing this, he saved over half a dozen lives: The man had been about three seconds from firing over his rapidly-constructed barricade—made from heavy blocks of wood and cardboard boxes that he'd brought in with him—at the door, assuming it was Natsuki and Shizuru making for a quick getaway. He would have taken Midori's head off and put a hole in Mai's lung the size of a baseball.

Instead, he slumped to the ground, blood and gray matter leaking out of his head, and Minoru said, "You can open your eyes now, kid."

Shiho uncovered her eyes, and gazed at Minoru in wonder for a moment. "Did…"

"I killed him, yeah," Minoru murmured. "I'm going to take you down there now, but I don't want you going in that room. Okay?" No kid should have to see that.

He didn't know that she already had that day.

If he had, maybe he would have set off right then and there to find Scratch-ass and take him apart, a fist-sized chunk at a time.

It was probably for the best that he didn't.

--

Natsuki stood up, recovering quickest, doing her best to put herself between Shizuru and the rest of them. "Everybody," she said quietly. "Inside. Stay out of both of the rooms."

Nobody asked her what in the hell was going on. Nobody needed to; of all of them, only Chie and Aoi were even sort of in the dark; the rest of them guessed at roughly the same thing (whether or not it was technically accurate seemed almost irrelevant): Revenge.

Revenge for the Carnival. Who it was seemed an impossible guess—how many people had they hurt? How many countless people had they hurt or killed in those horrible, bloody months?

Reito showed up a few moments later with Akane and Kazuya, neither clad in much more than they were born in and both appearing a mildly pathetic mixture of embarrassed and frightened. He and Midori went to set up traps by the windows. Reito used the barricades—the ones _without _blood on them—to block the gaping hole that had been made in the girls' room.

Shizuru led Natsuki outside. Natsuki protested, but Shizuru insisted, and when they were out, and the rest in, Shizuru took her robe off again.

"What are—" Natsuki managed, and then Shizuru was on her, hugging her tightly, squeezing her about the midsection, where a sort of fire seemed to light, beginning in her belly and spreading all the way up through her breast. Her eyes widened in surprise, and then in something else.

"Thank you," Shizuru murmured.

Natsuki didn't know what to say, and, after a moment, Shizuru let go. They stared at each other for a moment in mildly comfortable, if electric, silence.

"But," Shizuru whispered. "I'm going."

_You _what?

"They're here for me, Natsuki," Shizuru said. "_He…_" it was obvious who _he _was, "told me. He said that if he had me, none of you would ever have to meet them. So I'm going."

Natsuki froze, and the fire in her belly abruptly turned to ice. Her eyes stopped seeing Shizuru, started seeing…

Seeing Shizuru. Seeing her die.

_Seeing her die again._

Natsuki didn't know a lot of things about herself. If there was one thing Natsuki was not, it was honest with herself; in fact, some days she could hardly remember when she had last been on speaking terms with the honest facts about herself. She no longer knew what these facts _were, _and whenever somebody confronted her with them, she did what she was doing now: She froze.

She didn't know how she felt about Shizuru. She didn't know if she could love her the way Shizuru wanted. She had kissed her earlier that day, but she hadn't felt right when Shizuru had kissed back, later. She had rescued her without a second thought, but that had almost been relieving; a break from the tedium, from the conflicting feelings that she had felt building for months before.

She had never really thought about the prospect of _coming out. _About what it meant. About any of it.

But as Shizuru gave her hand one last squeeze, one which she barely felt from the numbness that had begun to run through her body, she knew that what she _didn't _need was even _less _time to try and sort it out.

And she knew that touching Shizuru had felt damn good.

The girl turned to leave, giving her a look that mixed sadness, hurt, and dread in equal measures, and before she was halfway around, Natsuki grabbed her by the shoulder.

_Maybe you just get off on these kind of situations._

_Maybe you get off on the thrill. Maybe you just don't know how to want something until somebody takes it away from you. Maybe …_

_Maybe you're just fucked up._

That was the last thing that would have ever surprised Natsuki Kuga.

Shizuru looked at Natsuki, her eyes blank. Resigned to death. Natsuki had seen that expression before.

Then Shizuru pulled away again and started to walk towards the hill.

For the second time in only a few minutes, Natsuki thought, _fuck this._

She grabbed Shizuru again, moving with a speed born of years of paranoia, and whirled her around, more forcefully this time, only to be met with the same dead eyes. Eyes that had nothing left to see in this world.

_Fuck it all._

Before she had time to ponder the finer points of what _coming out _really meant, she pulled the naked girl to her, her heart lighting up again.

_I don't know what I want. I don't know if I want you or not. I don't know if I love you, or if I'm just grateful to you for being the first to try and end my solitude. I don't know if I feel happy because you're my friend or something more. I don't even know if I can be attracted to women._

But as she took one last gaze on Shizuru's body, the last seemed to answer itself as Natsuki, for the first time in her life, took the initiative and not the offensive.

Shizuru's lips were dry this time, and she didn't react at first. Even for Shizuru, the great bastion of _cool, _of _in command, _the prospect of walking into death, even for those she loved, was too much for her psyche to bear, so she numbed herself.

Natsuki did a fine job of melting her. Her lips were hot on Shizuru's, and her hands pressed themselves into Shizuru, one at the small of her back, one about the girl's bare shoulders. Shizuru's skin was as soft as it was smooth, and after a moment, she started to kiss back.

_Maybe, _Natsuki thought, in a moment of something a little less intense than giddiness but a little more powerful then contentness, _we have a shot at this after all._

She prayed that Shizuru would agree with her.


	23. 21: Had Enough

Author's Notes:

—Sigh— yet another long span between updates, for which I can only apologize. I could offer you excuses, all of which I suppose are valid—wrestling with a sort of adjustment-related depression, school and work eating my soul, writer's block, three other fics, and the like—but instead I can only tell you how sincerely sorry I am. You guys (and girls…isn't "you guys" a generic, genderless phrase, though?) are awesome for not ditching out on me through this, and I'll never be able to tell you how grateful I am to you. Never.

Props go out to Anonymous ftw, kikyo4ever, Krampus, Hoppy-chan (AKA Naolin), AN, Sayosi, and xSojix for reviewing. Also, Hoppy-chan has a fic up called For Whom the Wind Blows, and it's awesome. Read it now.

Well, after you're done reading this one, anyway.

Hoppy-chan: Your reviews never leave me anything but glowing, both here and at SA. Thank you so much. Seriously.

Sayosi: I don't blame you. I was a little iffy when I started writing it.

Krampus: Oh, they will. And I don't think it will work how anybody expected it to, least of all myself—I'm postponing Fake and I Disappear right now so that I can work this plotbunny out of my head. Fans of Fake will hate me, but I'll give them the attention they deserve later.

Anonymous ftw: I feel as though I'm familiar with you from somewheresabouts. Do you hail from SA at all? Or am I blowing smoke out of my ass? Thank you, in any event.

So I've cranked out about four chapters for my new SR fic, I disappear, in the past two weeks, because I'm trying to build it some readership. I don't suppose a Res streak could hurt.

I've fixed the chapter numbering error in chapter 20. Stupid mistake. Sorry, all.

As always, thanks to my editor, Sumiregawanenene, for making this piece legible. Couldn'ta done it without her.

My first piece of Japanese in this chapter. _Sentai _ roughly "task force." Sorry all. It was unavoidable.

As always, thanks for reading!

* * *

_Intoxicated eyes / no longer live that life / you should have learned by now / I'll burn this _whole world down

_You will get what you deserve._

* * *

Chapter 21

Had Enough

Up until that point, certain elements of the group—Akane and Kazuya, for example—had been able to ignore, or at least pay as little attention as possible to, the predicament they were in. A few others—Mai and Mikoto, Chie and Aoi—knew that there was trouble brewing, but of what sort they were entirely uncertain. They had no solid proof that it had anything to do with them, so they did their best to pretend that the tragedies occurring in Goza were just that—tragedies, nothing more. Sick bastards perpetrating sick crimes, too bad, but damn I'm glad it wasn't me in that store.

As with many reality-defying fantasies, however, this illusion ended abruptly and without mercy. In this case, what brought it to its abrupt, bloody halt was the abrupt, bloody appearance of a pair of corpses in their cabin—one in the boys' room, one in the girls'. Midori supposed this was not entirely usual, but Minoru harbored no such illusions. He had ended quite a few young idiots' fantasies more bloodily than that. He supposed he should feel sorry about that, but then, it took a special sort of sociopath to do his job in the first place, as he had been told numerous times.

But, Minoru supposed, he couldn't be a sociopath, at least not entirely. Not when he was helping out a bunch of teens just barely done with squeaking voices and popping zits, at extreme risk to his own life, and for absolutely no money. He supposed he could chalk it up to revenge—and he did, quite vehemently, but something very small and petulant inside of his head quietly reminded him every time he tried to convince himself of this that he had never been a particularly vengeful sort, nor a particularly passionate sort. Laid-back sharpshooters weren't uncommon; he was sure the best out there, as was the case in most professions, were all full of vim and vigor and shat something fierce about their job or cause or some such nonsense, but he had been quite happy where he was prior to this shit-storm: laid-back, wealthy, and a little above average.

Why, then, was he helping a man who was strangely smart-looking in his tacky Hawaiian shirt and a beautiful, buxom redhead who couldn't have been more than three years out of college drag corpses out of a cabin in the middle of some tourist-trap in Goza?

He had no idea, but whatever it was, he was in it for good or ill. He could always bail at the end, he reasoned.

_Yeah fucking right._

They buried them under the cabin, which was on stilts, chasing out a good few rats and a good few more spiders that Minoru would sooner never think about again in the process. The rats would come back soon enough, and they would find the corpses and probably get fat off of them, and the cabin would stink like all hell in a few days, but these were things for other people to worry about.

What Minoru had to worry about was getting them out of this situation, which meant getting them off the beach. Trouble was, he had precisely no idea how to do this; their car was almost certainly wired and watched by a bunch of independent mercs who had no desire to win an award for _above and beyond the call of duty, _and so stayed right where they were, waiting for orders from Scratch-ass, who was plotting god-knew-what, but appeared to have a small—or not-so-small—army of them at his beck and call.

Considering what he knew about mercenaries, it was likely to be the _small_. Mercs didn't come on a global scale anymore, not when it was usually cheaper to enlist your own kids and arm them with your own sub-par weapons and use your own inept generals to tell them how best to get themselves shot. Mostly mercenaries were used in border skirmishes and by paramilitary groups with a lot of money and an agenda that nobody gave a shit about but them—he supposed that Scratch-ass fell cleanly into that category, as well.

He considered asking Midori as they worked if they had any idea what that woman, the one with the brown hair—her name escaped him at the moment—had done to piss such a powerful psychopath off so badly, but thought it best to rein in for now. If anybody knew, it was the woman herself, but she seemed in no condition to do much more than make out with what appeared to be her girlfriend at this point—something he'd witnessed and wisely ignored on their way out with the bodies.

_Girlfriend though? Really? If so, they've gotta be about as bipolar as you were with Kimmi. Maybe._

But then, some people got off on that stuff. Sometimes, maybe, they were the ones who had it right. Their relationships didn't get as stale as quickly, and their little nitpicks with other, the_ little things _that really killed a relationship, never sat inside their heads, piling up until they exploded. They came out all at once.

Maybe there was something to it. What, Minoru would probably never be sure of.

They had no shovels, so they had to work with planks of wood they'd torn off the side of the cabin. Minoru had told them he'd foot the bill if the owner bitched—which, of course, he would. They were just kids, after all. He was, as he'd previously noted, wealthy. Not rich. Just _wealthy. _ The kind of wealthy you could use to buy a house, but not a boat—that was how Yumi had put it. The kind of _wealthy _he could use to fix a house.

_The kind of wealthy that goes away damn fast if you throw it at stupid shit like cabins. Especially when you're not getting paid to do it. _

He shrugged to himself. He had enough money. He always seemed to. Killing people was one of the world's best paying jobs—second, it sometimes seemed, only to whatever job primarily encompassed paying people to kill other people.

_Introspection: Finished. _He said it once in his head, and then said it again to make sure he'd gotten the message. _Maybe later, when you have no corpses to bury and no apathetic, yet surely deadly mercenaries watching a van not fifty meters up a hill from you, their approach towards your cabin probably held off only by ninja who consider _bear food _to be a valid tactic. _

He shoveled _(planked?)_ a final, almost symbolic scoop of dirt over the small grave he'd made for the two corpses, and then patted it down a little. The girl and her buddy were already out from under the cabin—whether because they were content to let a middle-aged coot do most of the dirty work, or because they couldn't stand the sight or thought of burying a pair of corpses, both missing important parts out of themselves, Minoru didn't much care. He crawled his way back out, and shook his close-cut hair out, unleashing a small flurry of dust onto the pair, who were standing at about arm's length from each other, watching him in silence.

"Well," Minoru said, feigning cheer. "That's done with."

They stared at him in silence, neither entirely sure what to say. They looked more awkward than he'd expected, and he wondered what precisely they'd been doing while he'd been burying corpses. He decided he didn't much care about that either, but only with a little effort. Such was the nature of middle age.

Also part of the nature of middle-age was a lack of patience with what he observed to be young-person (not necessarily teenage—that girl looked to be over twenty) angst, especially while there was imminent danger. Or maybe that was the nature of surviving in his line of work.

"Okay. Don't talk about it, but you two are going to talk to me, and you're going to talk but good."

Midori spoke, but her voice seemed slightly strained. "About what?"

Minoru stared at her, silently willing her to cut the petty shit out. He wasn't entirely sure what the hell was wrong with the previously-energetic pair, but he had a feeling it had something to do with the meter's distance between them.

As he stared, he noticed something else in her pretty, serious face; something that seemed unusual: Stress. Her brow was creased, her eyes narrowed in spite of a lack of sunlight, her mouth curved down just slightly in the kind of frown that had nothing to do with happiness. He thought about asking her what the matter was, then decided against it. She'd get through it by herself, or if she didn't, it wasn't his problem.

But that decision nagged at him. Just a little.

"You," he pointed at the boy. "What's your name again?"

"Reito," the boy said. He seemed in better shape than Midori; it seemed, in retrospect, that his silence was mostly out of …some sort of courtesy. "And I don't think anybody but Shizuru—"

"The one with the light-brown hair?" Minoru interrupted, still shaky on names.

"Yes, that girl," Reito said, apparently unfazed by the interruption. "I don't think anybody but her can really tell you what this is about, but I can hazard a guess."

"Please," Minoru said. "Do."

Reito told him what he claimed to remember about the HiME carnival—leaving out his own participation—and about the First District which sought to control it, and about the Searrs Foundation. Either of these two groups may have had the money to pull off a stunt like this, he explained, but neither, to the best of his knowledge, would have a motive. Most importantly, he said, because of the destruction of the…what he called the _overlord _of the carnival, and thus the destruction of the conduit between this world and the "star," neither organization had any reason to continue on.

Frankly, Minoru wasn't sure how much of it he believed. That was to say, he was quite positive that he didn't believe a word of it, and he would have been able to dismiss Reito as a fucking nut with ease, but for one thing: Midori. As he told the story, Midori only watched him with great seriousness, her mouth shut and her back slumped, as though from some great weight that she'd been carrying a long, long time.

And Midori, he knew, was no fucking nut.

This troubled him greatly.

"Magical girls," he muttered. "You mean to tell me that you were…all of you were…a bunch of magical girls?"

"Not all," Reito said mildly. "The two, Chie with the glasses and city-cut, and Aoi with the blue eyes," (oddly enough, the latter description was quite useful for Minoru, who subconsciously noted eye color upon meeting somebody—perhaps a symptom of staring at too many people through a high-resolution zoom-scope) "had virtually nothing to do with any of this. They're just…friends." He intoned the word a little awkwardly, as though he were pronouncing something foreign for the second or third time.

"Magical girls," Minoru repeated, sitting down and biting back the urge to laugh, scream, and then leave. "I'm running around nearly getting eaten by bears for a bunch of ex-fucking-Sailor Moons." He shook his head, and then stood up again. "I mean, you _are _kidding, right? One of you is involved in some sort of gang, and you pissed somebody in the Yakuza off, right?"

Reito only watched him, more serious than Minoru had ever seen him while the man himself was near-hysterical all of a sudden. It made no sense—_couldn't _make any sense. Maybe it was the flaw of his aged mind, supposedly inured to all of the world's paradoxes and inconsistencies, thanks to of his armor of cynicism, the kind brought about by age. This was just some stupid kid telling a stupid joke, right? Reito was just another pretentious, oversexed, perpetually drunk college kid, trying to get a rise out of somebody wa-ay more worldly-wise than he would probably ever be in his entire coddled life? Trying to get a rise out of his girlfriend so that maybe she could get a rise out of him later?

Except there was nothing _coddled-_looking about Reito. And there was nothing _rising _on either him or the woman next to him.

"HiME-_sentai,_" Midori murmured suddenly. "That's what I called us."

"I never knew that," Reito said gently, without looking at her.

_What…the fuck. This is too fucking much. All of it. Fucking kids don't want to admit what kind of trouble they're in, so they try and lay it on me with a bullshit story about Magical Girls and an evil lord Kokuyou who wants…what? A new wife every so often? Who controls the entire goddamn world through his EVIL POWERS?_

_But what about the parts that make sense?_

_What parts that make sense?_

_What about the abrupt end of the Sino-Russian skirmishes around the time they described this "carnival" as having ended? What about the total fucking lack of contracts after that time? Why else would you have taken an assignment watching girls change through your scope? You're not picky, but you're pickier than that._

Minoru shook his head. This was bullshit. "I don't know what you're trying to pull on me, Reito," he said pointedly, angrier than he had been in months, "but stop, and stop now. You can tell me the truth if somebody's involved with the Yakuza or something—if anybody's going to go tattling to the cops, it ain't me, since the cops would probably like to ask _me _a few questions while I was in the neighborhood. But please, do _not_—"

_What about the _ninja?_ What about the bears eating freelancers, just like yourself? What about the tweenie girl who managed to sneak up on that guy, Nori? _

_Delusions. Delusional people. _

Something was tugging on his leg. He looked down, and saw the girl that he'd been escorting when the  
_ninja_  
crazy people in the trees had intervened on their behalf. Shiho, that was her name. She was sitting on the grass, eyes slightly downcast. He had no idea how he hadn't heard her sneaking up on him. He supposed it gave validity to the _crazy people in masks _theory, though.

What she said, though, did not. Nor did the look in her eyes—one of near-psychotic horror, and borderline-metal-case depression.

"I killed him," she murmured. "Please don't make me prove it to you. They're telling the truth—I killed him. I don't want to have to think about it again."

Minoru blinked. There was absolutely nothing false in her eyes. Nothing. Unsettling? Yes, but nothing that was untruthful.

Unsettling like a child who had killed somebody. He'd seen those; of course he had. The near-dead eyes, frightened and hostile all at once; usually those kids gripped an AK-47 or something equally ancient and deadly, and Minoru had always been glad that he'd been looking at them through a scope from a tree, and not a pair of combat goggles from a bush. Given a big gun and a little instruction, anybody could kill somebody given enough provocation, but it took a kid's blind fear and unthinking reflexes to blast the shit out of any bush that moved. Kids knew nothing of _standoffs. _If you cornered a kid and he had a gun, you killed him or he killed you a second later.

Those had not been good days, but they were precisely the days he was now reliving, courtesy of one Shiho Munakata.

He turned his head away. Like he had before.

"Fine," he said. "Say I believe you." He didn't, but he found himself willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if it meant not having to see a little kid look like that again. "Say you're all former…magical girls…and you're on the run from an evil organization. What do they want with you? And why the girl, especially?" Realizing that this description benefited nobody, he gestured in the general direction of the cabin for added emphasis. Reito knew who he was talking about.

"Shizuru. Shizuru Fujino. I have no idea. I'd ask her."

"I plan on it." He paused. "Once she's clothed."

Reito nodded sagely.

He would, too. If he was going to help these kids out, free of charge, and take Scratch-ass down (he was planning on that anyway, but they didn't need to know that) then he was going to know _exactly _what in the flying fuck was going on.

* * *

"How far out are they?" the man with the scratchy voice asked over the radio. The man with the sniper rifle took another look through his scope, adjusted the dials on its rangefinder, and stared for a second.

"A kilometer, tops."

"Why didn't you spot them sooner?" The man with the sniper rifle wasn't entirely sure, but the hoarse, flat man sounded almost disappointed. Like a chastising mother. The thought amused him.

"They had a well-thought-out approach vector, and they're moving in unmarked cars. If I hadn't spotted the guy takin' a leak out the side of the convoy, they'd probably been up our ass 'fore I caught wind of them."

"I expect that if that were true, you would not have much of an ass to spot them with," the man with the hoarse voice said. "They are, after all, coming to kill you."

"Not quite, buddy," the man with the scope said, and then cut the transmission by way of tossing the radio to the ground. "They're coming for those kids down there, and frankly, I don't intend to be anywhere nearby when they show up. Pay is nice, but the advance was enough to feed me for at least a few weeks"

Nor should he have, because what he saw was enough to drive just about anybody just a little deeper underground: A full convoy, perhaps sixteen or twenty unmarked vans, filled with what appeared to be professional soldiers, headed straight for them.

Unfortunately, he never got the chance to spend the advance. About ten seconds after the radio hit the ground, splitting into pieces, the man who was supposed to be backing him up, a man who he had never met before this day, shot him twice in the head from a tree not twenty meters off with a silenced pistol. The pistol clicked twice, and the man sagged into his harness.

"Do you think you can hit the driver of the lead truck?" the man with the hoarse voice asked this man. "If you can, then you can leave; return to your designated waiting point and I'll be in touch."

"You just want me to harass them, is all?"

"I need you to hold them up for at least five more minutes. I have regulars on the way, but without this extra time, the regulars will arrive to find nothing more than an empty camp."

"Just slow them down, eh?" the man said, taking a drag on his cigarette and raising his large automatic sniper rifle to his eye. "You got it."

"Once you're clear, your contract is filled. Wait around for your payment is all you need do."

"Yeah," he said. The line went dead.

This was probably suicide. If these guys were actually regulars, they'd have commandoes in the forest by now, hunting for people just like him. Factor in the middle-aged coot in the camp who seemed to be pretty damn good with his own boomstick, and you had a simple equation: Fire, and die.

But what the hell. He'd shot the other guy, as per orders, and he expected somebody was waiting around to shoot him if he didn't do what the throaty bastard said, also as per orders.

They were less than half a kilometer away now, on the main road, kicking up a hell of a dust cloud. Looking through his scope, he could see, through the windshield of the lead vehicle, eight men, all dressed in modern-looking combat armor, performing their final weapon checks; cocking weapons, making sure they were loaded properly, that sort of thing. All of their weapons were pointed at the ceiling, which meant they weren't amateurs, anyway.

But maybe they were, too.

He did a quick test of the wind, found there to be none, and then shot the driver. His gun made a resounding _crack _in the air, which seemed to bounce off of the water and back at him. His vehicle stayed on course for a few seconds, and then started to slow down.

He started packing up. Now they would _definitely _be searching for him, and like the throaty bastard had said, regulars were coming from his side as well. No need for him to stick around.

No need at all.

* * *

They had gathered just outside the cabin again when the shot rang out from the forest, driving them all to the ground in a reflex that none of them should have been able to pick up so easily. Shizuru had acquired clothing from somewhere, but she was still standing un-platonically near Natsuki; Mai had a campfire just starting to lick at the edges of a small temple of wood, and Minoru had his backpack. They were going to decide what they needed to do.

A few seconds after the first shot, there was an explosion, and if Minoru listened carefully—which he did—he could hear people shouting. Not panicked voices; authoritative.

"What was that?" Chie asked, her voice understandably strained. They all looked at Minoru, who shrugged.

"Hell if I know," he murmured. "Trouble is what I call it. I think we'd better go to ground, but fast."

Midori had more or less recovered herself, and it was she who looked at him now. After a second, he met her gaze, and a silent understanding formed immediately: _Minoru is the only person here who has any experience in modern warfare. That girl, Natsuki, has killed before, but she has not been to war. People will listen to Midori, so Midori must be an extension of Minoru's orders right now._

"Alright," Midori said, snapping to. "Everybody, to the forest, now. Safest spot to be." As much as Minoru hated to admit it, it was probably true—he had heard soldiers, and if soldiers were making themselves heard, they were coming in bulk.

Besides, there might be  
_ninja_  
some deranged lunatics in the forest, who just happened to be damn good at tree-to-tree fighting.

They started to move. They made it about five meters before the first authoritative voice—the same one he'd heard after the explosion, shouted, "Stop! Stay where you are!"

Then Minoru heard guns being cocked.


	24. 22: Hell 2

Author's notes

The streak continues! Bru-ha-ha-ha!

Thanks to Kryssa's Flute, Sayosi, and Krampus for reviewing! Remember, if you liked it or if you didn't, think about dropping me a review telling me why!

As always, thanks to Sumiregawa-Nenene for making this chapter legible!

And also, as always, thanks for reading.

* * *

_Burning now, I bring you hell.  
_

* * *

Chapter 22

Hell #2

They were professional, all right, and they'd been working together longer than Natsuki cared to imagine; that was obvious. They advanced in a staggered line, backs bent, assault rifles held to eye level, aimed both at and past the group. There were at least twenty of them, and they moved quickly and without reservation, knowing for certain that nobody was going to be sneaking up behind them because that was where their backup was. Natsuki thought of going for her gun—she kept it on her now, and if any police showed up to talk to her about it, she would have a few things to talk to _them _about—but decided against it. Even as HiME, the situation was more or less untenable. They had them by the balls, but good, and Natsuki knew it. Shizuru, wrapped now in a robe, shifted against her, and Natsuki knew that Shizuru knew it too.

Mai felt Mikoto begin to move. An unconscious twitch, maybe, from an old, now-defunct reflex, or something else. She clamped her hand—the one which was not tightly gripped in Yuuichi's—down on the younger girl's shoulder, staring at the advancing column of black-clad infantry in a mix of horror and wonder, and whispered, "Stay here, Mikoto."

"I don't like them," Mikoto murmured, relaxing nonetheless. "They're…bad."

_This whole trip is bad. This whole _world _has gone bad. What's one more group of soldiers on top of that?_

_Stop it. That's not you. Stop it._

Even so, Mai had no idea what to say. What did you say to a platoon of advancing soldiers? _Hey, bathroom's on the right, but you gotta buy something if you want to use it. Don't forget to wipe. _

The thought made Mai want to giggle a little hysterically.

Oddly, it was Minoru, the one of them who _didn't _belong, who addressed the soldiers.

"What's your business here?" he said. Mai was shocked—_he, _a man just moving into middle-age, a man getting a little soggy around the midsection, with, from what Mai could gather, no apparent talent for combat,was demanding something of the platoon of advancing infantry, with guns that looked like they could take a tank apart in seconds?

Apparently, he was. The soldiers stopped about five meters in front of them, and none of them moved for a moment. Minoru picked one out—it seemed at random, but Mai doubted it was—and asked again. "Talking to you, Sergeant," he said, his voice pointed and authoritative. "What's your business? You got none, me and my friends would appreciate you moving along. If you're looking for somebody to shoot, there's plenty of 'em in the woods, I'm sure you're aware."

"Orders received," the man he was speaking to said, obviously not to him. "Will comply."

Silence for a moment, and then the man said, "Minoru Alder. Our employer is willing to buy your contract from Gina in payment for your noninterference from here onward."

Someone from their group murmured something, and Mai herself was a little taken aback. _Contract? _

"Uh-uh," Minoru said, with an air of a father addressing his petulant son. "Not so easy. I've had one shit contract already this week, and I'm lucky to be standing here telling you about it. How about you state your business, and then we can talk about contracts."

"No clearance for civilians," the man said curtly. "If you show resistance, we will retaliate."

"Clearance, my ass. You're mercs," Minoru said angrily. "I can smell my own."

"Irrelevant. Noncompliance will result in retaliation. Stand aside."

"Where do you hail from, I wonder? Are you the Swiss Remnants? Chinese? You guys just a starter company hoping to cash it big off the Sino-Russian conflict before it ended? Shit, are you even out of your teens yet, Sarge?"

"Minoru," Midori murmured. "What are you doing?"

"Putting a little kid in his place, Midori," Minoru said. "This _sergeant_ here," he said it like it was a dirty word, "Isn't even your age. Fuck knows he's got no place ordering me around."

_They look pretty professional to me, _Mai thought.

"Step. Aside." The soldier lowered his weapon and drew his sidearm, a big, nasty-looking pistol with a hefty silencer on it. "Orders are not to harm the teenagers, but I've got nothing telling me I can't cap some old fucking—" he stopped. Minoru smiled, and Mai could swear she heard him murmur, _gotcha. _

"If you're taking these kids somewhere, I'm coming."

"Request confirmation," the soldier said, again not to Minoru. A moment's tense pause, and then, "Employer consents under the condition that you agree to a buy-out, and that you surrender your firearms to us."

"He planning on giving them back? I'm attached to them, and they cost quite a bit of money." For one wild second, Mai saw it clearly in her mind, clear as day: The sergeant refusing, and Minoru shouting that that did it, he wasn't going and this meant _war_, and then pulling his pistol, and then—

"After the contract has been bought and you're clear. Now come with us. Please." The last was spoken with a certain reluctance, a sort of petulance, and Mai realized that Minoru had been right—the sergeant _was _just a kid. A well-trained kid, maybe, but a kid.

Minoru said, "Let me consult my…" and then stopped, frowning. "Um. Give me a minute." The soldier said nothing.

Turning to them, Minoru said, "I'll say it frankly, I don't like it."

"The hell do you care?" It was Yuuichi who spoke, surprisingly enough, his voice as rough as his speech. "You're here on _contract_, anyway, and they're buying." Somebody murmured agreement, though nobody else voiced it so openly. "You're full of shit is what you are, and we don't need your help."

"I _was _here on contract," Minoru said, brushing Yuuichi off like he was nothing at all. "_Was. _That's when I was here watching you kids brush your teeth through a sniper scope, like a spare few mercs have been doing since." He admitted it without shame nor sheepishness, likewise taking no pride in what this implied. Nobody blushed nor protested, maybe because the situation was too imminent to have a fit over something as trivial as maybe being seen in the buff a few seconds by a seemingly asexual old man with a sniper rifle. "Stopped being paid for what I'm doing a while back, and I'm frankly in the same boat you are about now."

"So you're just looking to save your own ass, then? Is that it? Or is there something else you haven't told us? Shit, we don't even know what kind of boat we're _in._" Yuuichi said, not to be denied, and to his amazement, Mai spoke up in support of him.

"Who…" she murmured, her voice that of a powerful train just starting to accelerate, and in that instant, Minoru knew he was in for a verbal beating, and that if anybody was going to sway the group into tossing him out and gunning it against the soldiers here, it was her. "Who the _hell _do you think you are? A perverted stowaway? Found you in the back of our van, and you seem to have _heaped _trouble on us since then, and nothing but. You take Shiho into the woods…_Shiho,_" she said it like it meant something, and Minoru guessed that maybe to the people who counted to her, it did, "of all people, and you have Yuuichi…you have him practically clawing his eyes out with worry…you _bring this kind of trouble on us, _you put us right back where we were before…before _THEN, _and then you think you can _SPEAK FOR US?_" She was, indeed a train. She was practically screaming by now, her eyes wild and furious. "You think that you have some kind of right of dominance over us? Just because you're older? You have more guns? You think—" Yuuichi cut her off, putting his hand on her shoulder and pulling her near to him, glaring daggers at Minoru. As far as they were concerned, nothing had gone wrong until Minoru came along, which was, in some ways, true. He found that he was receiving more than a few glares—from the one with the blue eyes, Aoi, and from a couple, an innocent-looking boy and a pretty, simple-looking girl, and from the young one with the black hair. It was her that scared him more than the rest—protective, rather than offended. _You upset her, how fucking dare you?_

"Get the fuck out," Yuuichi hissed, and the others nodded. "Get out and take these fucking soldiers with you."

Minoru was at a loss—he hadn't expected _this. _

"No," Shizuru murmured, and suddenly, the attention shifted to her. She was the one who had practically fainted into Natsuki's arms, naked and shaken. It would have been the same as if Chie, still a little shell-shocked, had spoken up. "Please. He's right," she said. "This is bad. All of this is bad. We need to go, and we need to go now."

Natsuki, next to her, nodded. "Please, listen to her. I don't know if you know what kind of shit we're in, but—"

"But you're about to find out," Minoru whispered, his eyes no longer focused on the group, but behind them. To the woods.

To the fucking _woods._

_Fucking delusional tree-hoppers. Why the _fuck _did you think they could keep the woods safe?_

_The fucking woods._

Now he turned and spoke to the soldiers. "I think you got yourself a deal, boys, and I hope to hell you have a good goddamn piece of backup here."

The soldiers weren't listening. They were staring at the woods too, and raising their weapons. Minoru heard the muffled sounds of speech, not directed at him but at each other, over a private link, probably. Within a few seconds, other soldiers started to move over the ridge, but fast.

Minoru turned back to the group. Natsuki had spotted what he'd seen. So had Reito, and so had Midori. None could find it in them to speak. The soldiers they'd encountered first began to move towards them quick.

"Stay back!" Yuuichi shouted. "We don't want any part of—"

"Tate needs to be quiet," Mikoto said quietly, now turning to face the woods too. "We need to leave."

"What…" Mai turned to face where Mikoto was staring, and then she gasped.

From the woods, what seemed to be a dark blob was advancing towards them quickly, like a charred, vengeful amoeba. Looking closely, one could see that it was not some amorphous, asexual, slightly crispy entity, but a line. A line of people.

A line of soldiers. Dressed in black, like the first, but their weapons were different. Longer. Not that that meant much to Mai.

Advancing very, very quickly.

"Now that we've spent all our leeway time speaking, I think we're going to have to run," Chie whispered, and now they _did _all turn to her.

Minoru nodded. "Move, kids. Move now."

That was when the first shots rang out from the line. A trio of _crack crack cracks_ was all; nothing that would seem threatening until two pockets of dirt kicked up around the sergeant. The third shot, it would seem, found its mark, and he dropped with a muffled cry. A pair of soldiers grabbed him before he had time to hit the ground and started dragging him, and Minoru shouted it this time: _"RUN!_"

They ran. All of them, at once, with the frantic panic that Minoru was sure he could witness at the beginning of a cattle stampede if he had the occasion to incite one himself. The soldiers, young perhaps, but professional, moved aside and advanced, raising their weapons and opening fire, their guns _crack crack crack_ing like the others had. The weapons were silenced, no noisier than the rapping of a fist on a table, but somehow, they seemed infinitely louder, more deafening, at least to Mai, who wasn't really seeing them at all.

She was seeing herself running. Running after Takumi and Akira. Running after the girl next to her; that sweet, evil little fucking girl with her little pigtails and her enormous sword. That fucking…

People were starting to die around her. As they passed the first line of soldiers, they formed a line around the group, shielding them, dying as per terms of their contract. People were shouting, and they were dying.

Dying.

Dying because of_  
SHE'S RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.  
KILL HER NOW, BEFORE SHE KILLS TAKUMI. BEFORE SHE KILLS YUUICHI  
YOU FUCKING WEAKLING, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE_  
A pair of strong arms gripped her before she knew she was falling. Before she knew she'd fallen behind, started just standing there, maybe expecting to start floating. Maybe expecting something to rise up out of the ground.

Minoru had her around the waist. She was light—light as hell, actually. He wondered briefly whether he'd see flesh or simply rib if she simply disrobed right now. He was strong—it was hard to climb trees with a five kilogram backpack and _not _be strong—but it honestly felt for a moment, as he picked her up, that he was only lifting air.

He didn't know it, but for a moment, he was.

The world came rushing back around Mai, and Yuuichi was screaming her name; he'd practically tripped over himself, whipping around as soon as he realized Mai was no longer nearby—Mikoto was already tearing the sand up sprinting back towards her. Shots were starting to echo near them now, and Mai could hear the distant hum of a helicopter. A black-clad man not a meter away from them screamed, clutching at an invisible lead-bug bite in his throat, and dropped to the ground. People were shouting, voices muffled but still obviously frightened and angry all at once. Something exploded nearby—a grenade, but Mai didn't know it—and Mikoto grabbed Minoru by the hand.

"We need to move," she said simply.

"Don't need to tell me, kid," Minoru said. "Get moving. I've got this one."

Mai started to get heavier of a sudden, and Minoru murmured to her, "Can you walk?"

Mai didn't know, but she knew Minoru was about to drop her. Up ahead of them, Natsuki had now noticed them, stopped, and started back for them as well, drawing a pistol and snapping shots off at the advancing line of soldiers. Minoru had no idea if she hit anybody or not—the cries were getting too constant now. She reached them shortly, and shouted, "Is she okay?" as loud as she could to be heard over the battle around them.

"Think so. Help me carry her." Minoru, it seemed, had no trouble making himself heard in the middle of a warzone.

Natsuki grabbed her legs. Mai didn't protest.

Together, they made it up over the hill in only a few seconds. The others were already there, and as soon as they were clear of the battlefield, the soldiers began to retreat—a convoy's worth of unmarked, plain-looking vans waited for them there, and they were quickly ushered into the spacious interior of one of them. They were moving less than twenty seconds later—true military efficiency, even if their possible saviors weren't military, per se. They rode in utter silence, none of them entirely ready to look at anybody else yet. Mai rested lightly in Yuuichi's arms, her eyes half-open, and it was that girl that Minoru thought on then.

Because, for a second there, it had really felt like she was just floating.

* * *

A/N:

Short as hell, I know. This is meant to be a transitional chapter, you could say, between the first and second parts of this story; the first and second story arcs, if you will, a la School Rumble. Expect more sometime next week! (A chapter of length, for once.)


	25. 23: Till the End

Author's notes

So. It's been more than a week. This is me bowing in penance. In that time I've taken a Physics midterm and started/finished an Engineering project, and, yes, I cheated and wrote a MariMite short. It's called White Reflection, and you should read it. In my defense, it came out in about two hours, between two of my classes. I have no regrets.

I've also discovered the Ouran High School Host Club fandom. Only vaguely, since Yaoi isn't really my thing, but the series was beautiful. Left me near to tears at the end. I'll probably be writing a short for it sometime soon. Just in case you were, you know, curious. Um.

But even so, I promised you something last week. I'm very sorry about not making my deadline (as per usual). I hope the chapter will make up for it.

Credit where it's due: The only reason you're reading this chapter when you are is because of my almighty editor, Sumiregawa Nenene, who punted my ass out of the proverbial pit of writer's block. Any plotzlitches in this chapter come from her, but any poor handling of said zlitches are my fault alone. The gist: Thank her, scream at me.

This chapter went through without being beta'd for purposes of getting it out faster—it's long enough and the timing is poor enough that this would have likely delayed it up to two days more. If you find it to be most dissatisfactory, leave me a note and I and Miss Nenene will give it a good run-through and I'll re-release it. I think it's okay, but of course I would.

In any event, on with the show! And thanks for reading! (Don't forget to drop me a line if you liked it, or if you didn't).

* * *

_Why give up?_

* * *

Chapter 23

Till the End

Looking back, Natsuki should have seen it coming. Yes, the black-clad soldiers had saved them, but what had they saved them from? Black-clad soldiers. It hadn't been an act perpetrated by a single group, since the fighting had been very, very real—Natsuki herself had killed a pair of them—but their means had been similar; why shouldn't their motives be as well?

This piece of introspection came to her remarkably easily as she opened her eyes, allowing her head a moment to adjust to the sudden, unexpected change of scenery. The bizarre, momentarily inexplicable change in décor: From the back of a black van that smelled mildly of tobacco and gunpowder, trying desperately not to get in the way of the combat helicopter that had started to strafe their convoy about two minutes after they'd been loaded away; to the near-black room, made of what the back of her skull, pressed up against it, told her was very cheap concrete or stone, which smelled vaguely of urine and turpentine. Her head was still foggy, probably from whatever it was that had caused this odd lapse in her internal clock, and probably the external one as well, so for the moment, she felt fairly content to lay there, pondering the merits of a hard, piss-stained floor as a pillow. Maybe she would have, too.

Natsuki sat bolt upright for reasons she would only be able to explain much later, a searing pain tearing through her stomach and up her torso. It seemed to stop moving at her breastbone, and for one tense moment, she thought she would be spending the duration of her prison stay in rapidly mounting agony. A second later, her gorge rose, and she bent over and let her stomach empty onto the piss-stained floor that had served so faithfully for so short a time as her pillow. Her vomit was a ripe green, something she hadn't really seen in vomit before, and smelled strongly of the same turpentine she was quite certain she smelled out of the room.

She put a hand to her stomach, which settled almost as soon as it was empty, and stayed in that position for a few seconds, tiny droplets of stomach acid hanging from her flushed lips, her whole body tingling.

It took her a few seconds to realize that her hand, clutched to her stomach, was warmer than her other hand, still holding her up off the stone floor. She pondered this abnormality for a moment, and then, with more effort than she'd have expected, sat up on her calves and took her hand away from her stomach.

It came away red, and not just a little. Blood dripped from her palm, full to the brim, seeping between her fingers and off of the sides. Startled, she looked down, found a rapidly-spreading stain on the left side of her shirt, plastering the thin fabric to her flesh.

For a minute, she found she could only stare at it, watching it spread in an oddly symmetrical fashion. _Shouldn't the bottom be progressing faster than the top? Is that just the myth of gravity? _

_No, wait._

She shook her head once, and then again, found it did her no good. She knew what it was she had to do, she just couldn't come up with it. It was like her head was filled with lead and she couldn't seem to get past it, no matter how hard she blinked, no matter how many times she shook it.

_Was I drugged?_

_Or have I just lost more blood than I thought?_

_How long have I been out?_

She wasn't sure. The answer was, again, just underneath the layer of lead that had made its way into her skull. Just like all the other answers. She could get to them, but the digging was just too much. Best to send a canary in first, make sure there's not some kind of gas still sitting  
_Gas.  
Fucking  
Gas._

What that meant, she wasn't sure. She knew it was important. Damn important. _Did they gas me? _

It seemed likely. After all, she couldn't trust them. Not at all.

Somehow, her mistrust and the validations of her inherent paranoia seemed to bring her enough motivation not to let herself bleed out all over the stone floor. Slipping out of her shirt, she ripped a shred off of it—it came off surprisingly easy, which meant she'd probably been ripped off when she bought it—while she looked at her cut more intently—it was fairly large, but surprisingly clean.

_Where the hell would I have gotten something like this? Shouldn't it be nastier if it came from a fight? It almost looks like I was cut with a scalpel._

Refusing to think on it more for the moment, with her brainpower so limited already, Natsuki tied the mostly-rectangular strip around her ribcage, making sure to apply as much pressure as she could to the cut area, which was already starting to clot a little.

_Probably it had been mostly clotted when I woke up, and moving around like a dumbass ripped it open again. _Hopefully the shirt would help it heal better, stop her from unconsciously being a bad patient again.

That's what he used to call her when she showed up torn and bloody—a bad patient. He wasn't even a doctor, he'd just splash on some hydrogen peroxide (_Double-H Double-O, he called it_) and then bandage her up and leave her laying on his couch, naked as the day she was born if it was really bad, and when she woke up he'd be gone, and she'd leave until she needed somebody to splash on some double-HO and bandage her up again when she couldn't do it herself.

She considered leaving what was left of her shirt where it lay, decided against it. Her recent months _sans _violence had verily exponentiated her modesty, and she couldn't quite bring herself back to where she'd been before, not on a whim anyway.

She had just finished donning her shirt when somebody said, "You know, we do have bandages. Had we known you were going to make such a mess of yourself, we'd have kept them on you longer."

_Lead-head it is. _

Natsuki lifted her lead-head as quickly as she could, taking great care not to disturb the equilibrium within that she suspected was preventing her from a debilitating headache. Standing outside of her cell was a tall, casually-dressed man whose fingers, one set cupping his elbow while the other stroked several days worth of stubble on his chin, were far too long and far too thin for his not-unimpressive gut. He had a thin mess of hair, like a toupee but fairly obviously attached to his skull, covering his baldness, and it seemed to Natsuki strangely reminiscent of a man wearing a leaf to cover his privates. She snickered at the thought, unable to control herself. _Do I have a concussion? _The answer seemed increasingly to be yes, though she thought that if she did, her brain ought to be kicking at her skull about now.

If it bothered the man, he didn't show it. Only smiled at her. "You heal remarkably quickly, Miss Kuga."

_How does he know my name?_

_Oh, right. He's got me locked up. He knows whatever the hell he wants to._

"Though I daresay you're rather lucky to be alive, in spite of this."

"Some good it does me," she said, her words coming out slurred into, "_shome gooit uzz ee._" She blinked, and then touched the left side of her face, finding the sensation dulled considerably. For a single terrified, horrible moment she feared that maybe she'd suffered some sort of brain damage when they did…whatever they did, but a second later, the man said, "If you're having trouble feeling that half of your face, don't worry about it. It's probably just a side-effect of the anesthetic we gave you. Now…" he almost seemed as though he was enjoying himself, "what precisely did you say?"

Natsuki grimaced, screwed her face up in focus. "I shed," she said as clearly as she could, "_shome guud it tus me._ You sheem to have me locked up nishly."

The man blinked twice, absorbing it as best he could, and then laughed of a sudden. "Locked up?" he said, chuckling to himself. "Have you tested the door to your cell yet? I suppose not. You only just woke up, after all."

Natsuki frowned. She wanted to stand up, whether to test the door or to punch the man, she wasn't certain. "What…" she gathered herself as best she could, wanting to sound threatening but willing to settle for not sounding pathetic. "What…am I doing here…if I'm not locked up?"

"I wonder," the man smiled—that was to say, his lips curved upwards—and Natsuki decided at once that it wasn't any kind of smile at all. "It wasn't me who put you here, after all. I'm here to retrieve you, in fact. I'm afraid the captain insisted on detaining you until you'd been checked out as…how did he put it?" The man paused, and scratched at his face again. "Calmed."  
_liar liar pants on fire_  
Strangely, this was not the first time this thought had occurred to Natsuki that day.

"Faut you shed I wash shedated," Natsuki murmured, her eyes narrowing. The man wasn't lying, per se—or if he was, he was good enough at it that worrying on it further would serve no purpose—but he was plainly not being friendly with her, which, when she considered his pleasant demeanor, was a lie unto itself, and therefore something to pay very, very close attention to. As she thought this, she felt her adrenaline pick up, and her head cleared a little.

"The captain found your actions on the Goza beach impressive enough that he wished to take no chances. I sincerely apologize for your present conditions." At this, he actually_ bowed,_ though it, like his smile, was not truly a bow—the look on his face for a moment was too ugly. Too bitter."If you'd like to come with me, I'm quite certain we can give you something for your pain."

To her surprise, Natsuki found that there wasn't much. That didn't mean that she could stand—she moved into a squatting position, but found her legs to be not much more use than jelly—but as her head cleared of whatever had mucked it up (ironically, also a bit like jelly) no thudding, eye-bursting pain seemed to step in to fill the gap.

"Ah, still having trouble walking." His back straight again, his face seemed to simply melt back into its previous smile, and after a moment, that burning  
_hatred_  
ugliness was simply gone again. "I'll have somebody bring you a wheelchair at once."

The idea immediately repelled Natsuki, who didn't like the idea of being stuck with her back to somebody she barely knew, but she figured it couldn't be _too _long before she was up and about again.

As though possessed with a dour sort of ESP, the man said almost immediately, "If you can't walk now, I wouldn't expect to be able to for at least a day or two," he said. "We had to make an incision into your leg when we got to you, to remove a piece of shrapnel before it cut into your femoral artery. In the process we had to move some muscle aside, and I'm afraid we may have done some damage, due to the urgency of the whole thing. I'm afraid field surgeons are never the gentlest of hands in any case, but they saved your life, so I'm sure you'll forgive them."

Natsuki grimaced. _I can't wheel myself, either. Not with this gash on my side. _"What happened here?" she asked, her words a little less muddled, clutching her bloody, bare side.

"A similar fate, I'm afraid," the man said solemnly, only he wasn't really solemn at all. "I can tell you, if you'd like, or I can save the tale for a time when you're feeling more yourself."

"Ish it long?" Natsuki managed to prop herself up so that her torso was straight, at least. It took some doing, between her half-numb ass and a pair of arms which she was hesitant to move more than a few centimeters in either directions, but she did it nonetheless. _She _was impressed, anyway.

"In gory detail? Yes." The man scratched his chin again. "A military-style report is rarely brief and hardly ever fascinating enough to guarantee your consciousness all the way through, drugs or no. If you'd like, I can give you the condensed version while…excuse me." He paused, and Natsuki heard a phone buzzing quietly from somewhere on his person. He dug into the pockets of his slacks, extracted a small cellular phone, and flipped it open, raised it to his ear.

"Yes?" he said curtly, turning away but not dropping his voice. "Yes, there was blood. I should have your head, but I think I'll settle with your fee for now. Yes, and bring a wheelchair." At this, he shut the phone and turned back to Natsuki, and again she caught the last vestiges of The Ugly fleeing from his face. "Please excuse me," he said. "I do have a great deal of business these days."

Natsuki frowned. "Who are you?"

"Who am _I_?"

"You. Them. All of this." Her mouth was getting better by the minute, and Natsuki was beginning to suspect that maybe the numbness had had more to do with the way she'd been laying than any sort of drugs.

_And that makes sense, doesn't it? In a twisted sort of way, it does. If their anesthetics dulled me that badly, I probably wouldn't be half as coherent as I am. Adrenaline can't push off a really tough dose of tranquilizer, and I'm obviously on some sort of juice, since there's a giant gash in my side and another one in my leg that I can't feel._

Thinking about it like this made Natsuki feel good in an odd sort of way. It was almost nostalgic—the way her mind seemed to slide out of her body as she thought about her situation objectively, judged her surroundings. It provided her with a calmness she could never find anywhere else. It was something she hadn't felt in quite a long time—that feeling of coolness, of readiness in spite of the drugs. It was one of the things, though she never really thought on it, that made her such a dangerous person. A dangerous _warrior. _

"I can't tell you much," the man said. "Mercenaries are notoriously taciturn about their private affairs, but I can tell you that you are currently under the protection and employ of the Third Swiss Remnants, a fully-supported regiment of mercenaries of the very finest caliber. You are sitting in a cell in an abandoned prison not awfully far away from where the van was—forgive me," he paused, shaking his head at himself. This annoyed Natsuki—on another man, maybe it would have been charming, but this man was bookish, and although he was well-spoken, he came off as just slightly  
_insane_  
off-color, which ruined the effect he was going for.

"I'll tell you the story of the van in a bit. In any event, you are not far from Goza, though I'm sure you understand that we have enemies that you are not to leak that information to." He gave her a secretive sort of wink, something that she was sure was supposed to represent camaraderie, but was, as with so many things about him, hopelessly out of place. "And I…" he shrugged, and this seemed to suit him better. "I'm an accountant." He smiled at her. "But in times of crisis,"  
_liar liar pants on fire_  
"we all must rise above our station, don't you think?"

_Crisis…?_

Something _dinged _out of Natsuki's view, and the man looked towards it, scratched his beard again. Another thing that seemed to suit him—it was probably a nervous habit, Natsuki decided.

_People display nervous habits when they lie._

She kept that in mind, too.

"Ah," he said. "Pardon me. It would seem that I have a bit of business to attend to before getting your wheelchair. My apologies." He started walking, and Natsuki noticed his gait to be long and awkward—he probably wasn't lying about being an accountant, either, she decided. But he _was _lying, of that she was certain.

_Even so…_

Was it possible that what he'd alluded to was true?

If she looked back at it very hard, she could remember some of it; how they'd ridden in the van, a few of them—Midori, mostly, along with Minoru and Natsuki herself, kicking ideas around about what precisely was going on, though it seemed that Shizuru was holding back on something. As though she knew precisely what the answer was to that all-important question that they were kicking around, and she simply had not been questioned about it properly. They really couldn't come up with anything, though—many of them had become well-versed with fighting—too well-versed—but none of them had experience with this sort of thing—military affairs. Escalation. That was a word Minoru had thrown in there a lot. _Escalation. _It made a queer sort of sense to Natsuki, though she wasn't quite sure how yet.

And then there was Mai.

Mai simply sat there, holding Mikoto close to her on one side, and holding Yuuichi close on the other. Mikoto had clung to her with a strange look on her face—something a bit like determination. Yuuichi had tried to hold _her, _but Mai would have none of it. She had whispered something into his ear when he tried to put up a snit about it, and about midway through, his eyes had sort of…sparked out, like a lightbulb switched off.

_That's not right._

_Like a lightbulb after it's been hit with a baseball bat._

He had started to say something back.

Before he could finish, the world had decided to quit around them. First tentatively—the van had rocked, and hard, sending them all into other people's places—places they didn't necessarily have any business being—but before anybody could get embarrassed about them, the van had jerked again, and then the world had torn itself apart around them. Natsuki remembered being flung out of her seat, her mind locked up in numbing panic, and then a sharp pain and  
_men with guns_  
It had happened to her a few times before—being suddenly and unexpectedly deprived of her consciousness. The most recent case was when Miyu—that bloody blue-haired robot, probably the most frightening thing Natsuki had ever seen, HiME carnival or no, because _nobody _should be able to move that god damned fast—had dropped behind her in a strange, stone room underneath Fuuka Academy, zapped her with something  
_on my neck_  
her hand moved faster than it should have been able to in her condition, but slower than she could have moved were she in better shape. She practically slapped at the back of her neck, then came back, more slowly, and felt around, searching to see if the area was tender or extra-sensitive.

It wasn't. After another second, she was able to breathe again. She gently touched her leg, found it relatively numb. He wasn't lying about that, either.

He was lying, though, and Natsuki got the feeling that whatever he was lying about, she had better catch on, but quick, or she was going to run the risk of getting into whatever it was she was getting into completely unprepared.

Because she _was _getting into something. Maybe if she'd known what, things wouldn't have gone in the chaotic direction they did.

Or maybe they would have. She did not, after all, have her gun anymore, and it would be guns that she would need, and soon. She knew this on some level.

It didn't make her happy.

She wanted him to come back. The man who was lying about something. She wanted him to come back and tell her what happened to the rest of her friends. Had they even survived?

_What if they're—  
What if _she _is…_

Impossible. Her mind rejected it offhand. These people couldn't kill Shizuru. She was too strong, and sometimes, she was too  
_insane_  
focused. Before they got close…

If they got close, Natsuki felt as though Shizuru might resurrect the HiME star, gift it with all of its immense energy, singlehandedly, just to see them all dead in front of her. _Especially _after what Natsuki had done back at the camp, just before they'd all left. _Especially _after that.

_Especially after…_

_"What was that?" Shizuru's voice was hoarse when Natsuki pulled away from the kiss. "What was that, Natsuki? Tell me what that was."_

_"That was…" Natsuki didn't know how to say it. Natsuki didn't know what it was she didn't know how to say. "That was…" she let a breath out. "That was me asking you not to leave. To stick it out with us, to keep going. Until the end, one way or another."_

_"To stick with us?" Shizuru didn't say it as though it was a question. Probably it wasn't. It was a sort of cool, if overly-assuming, confidence that she had—before, it had scared Natsuki. Before, when she'd tried to kill everybody. _

_No, that was a lie. It scared her now, too. Scared her so very, very much. Natsuki was a warrior, a fighter with the talents of a trained soldier, but independence and creativity to match it, and Natsuki was not often scared. _

_But Shizuru…Shizuru scared her. The cold_  
predatory  
_focus in her eyes sometimes. _

One time in particular.

_And even so, she'd kissed her. And Natsuki thought she might just do it again, at that. _

_"To stick with _me," _Natsuki admitted. "I need you here, now. Mai is nearly…useless because of what happened, so I think you're the only one I can count on if things turn ugly."_

_Shizuru smiled. Natsuki was lying a little, and both of them knew it._  
liar liar pants on fire  
_Shizuru smiled, and slid her arms around Natsuki's waist. "I'll help you, Natsuki," she said, the truth flooding out of her voice. "I'll help you, if you'll kiss me again."_

_It should have sounded sick. _I'll help you save the lives of these people if you'll give me a kiss. _Oddly enough, though, it didn't. It sounded almost … natural to Natsuki. Maybe it was something she'd expect from Shizuru. Maybe it was just something she expected at the moment. After all, where was she? Behind a cabin, her arms still around the pale, smooth, bare waist of this girl…_  
this beautiful girl who  
_her lips still a little moist from the lips of this girl who…_  
entrances you so and  
_was pressing herself up against her waist, and a little more than that, against someplace just a little bit lower; this girl who_  
scares you just a little  
_loved her so much that it was_  
horrifying  
_astounding._

_So why not?_

Why not indeed.

_She kissed Shizuru again, bringing her closer this time, wrapping her hands tight about her waist. It was different this time than it had been before. Than it had been all those times before. Those times, it had almost been like a first kiss, every time. This time it was different—this time there was something more to the way Shizuru gripped Natsuki's shirt in back; the way her hand roamed around the back of her waist. This time there was a _hunger _to it that half of Natsuki's body immediately rebelled against, and half of it, most notably something far lower than her heart, embraced. _

_They broke it eventually, and Shizuru smiled at Natsuki. It was a lover's smile, yes, but there was something more to it._  
i told you so  
liar liar pants on fire  
_"I'll help you," Shizuru said. "I would have no matter what, Natsuki, but since you put it so concisely, we'll do it your way."_

Her way indeed.

Had her way gotten them all killed? Were they all dead because of _her way?_

What was the alternative, though? To let Shizuru just walk into the arms of…whoever? The gaping black maw of soldiers?

Somehow, Natsuki thought that wouldn't be enough to satiate it. Not thought. _ Knew. _

But even so.

Did that mean that they were all dead because of nobody in particular?

_They can't all be dead. _Back where she started. Simply because Shizuru would not allow it.

She could only put her faith in that. What little she had.

She laid back down. After putting her faith in that, she could only wait.

Waiting was always the hardest part.

* * *

"Buy my contract, huh?" Minoru said, frowning up at the tall, fattish man who claimed to be an accountant. "I've gotten that offer once before. What makes you think I'm going to take you up on it this time?"

The man smiled. "I can double your going rate for this contract, Mister Alder; I've said that already. I would think that this number alone—and it is a sizable number, as I'm sure you understand—should settle the matter for you."

"Money's no good if you're too busy decomposing to spend it," Minoru said. "Whatever's going on around here—"

"I'm afraid I really can't give you any details," the man interrupted, and Minoru grinned inwardly. _Bingo._

"Didn't ask for them. What I was gonna say was that whatever's going on around here is pretty nasty. I have a hard time believing you even _found _a Merc regiment to hire, let alone were able to afford them, no matter how much you claim to be able to pay me. Nasty situations rarely have such a neat, tidy ending."

"Well," the man smiled, "the Sino-Russian conflict does seem to have taken a rather bloody turn in the past months. I think you'll find that mercenary regiments are popping up out of retirement all over the place. It's a good time to be a hired gun, if I do say so myself. I wouldn't dream of sullying my ranking with the mercenaries _now_ by killing one of their own."

_I know a lot of people who would say it's _always _a good time to be a hired gun. Me, I think I'd say quite the opposite. Isn't that why I…_

_You didn't quit, Minoru. _

_But I did. I retired. I stopped whoring my gun out to all but the most inane of buyers, pretty much only for contracts that I wouldn't even have to fly to fill. Backyard shit. What the fuck am I doing back here?_

_The money was too good. That was what you'd said. The money was too good, and he seemed _very _intent on having you._

_How the hell did he even find my name? I've been retired for over a year and a half. If what he's saying is true, my name should have been off the directory in six months. _

This matter, Minoru thought, merited further investigation. He had a couple of people. A couple of _friends. _Even an old retired sniper made friends now and then.

"What happened to the rest of them?" he asked of a sudden. "What happened to the rest of the kids?" He almost sounded like a concerned parent when he asked.

"Taken, I'm afraid," the man said a bit regretfully. Minoru didn't like it one bit—it sounded like a man repenting over a bad business deal, not a man who had just lost children to soldiers. "When the van was hit, we rushed a medevac to the area and started pulling people out, but we'd only managed to get you and one other to the van by the time their column hit the wreck zone. The soldiers panicked and fled. They're being disciplined now, but the damage is done."

"What do you think…"

"If I had to guess, I'd color them dead," the man said with that same note of regret, but this time there was something else to it. He scratched at his beard as he said it, and Minoru thought, _nervous habit. Something to do with your hands so they don't get in your mouth's way while you're spitting bullshit. _"I'm afraid our enemies want something entirely different from what we want, and I think they're willing to—and, indeed, intend to—kill to get what they need."

"And what is that?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you much of that, either, I'm afraid. It's none of your concern, in any case. I've paid you, and so you should consider our dealings at an end. I have a jet ready to fly you out of the area, and it'll leave in an hour. Your contract has been purchased, so you have no choice in this matter." The man sounded almost frustrated. Minoru made a note of that, too. "You weren't wounded badly, so I expect you'll be able to walk out of here on your own. The man outside will escort you to your jet. As for me…" he smiled, and Minoru thought that it was no kind of smile at all, "I have a wheelchair to deliver to a young lady."

"Which is it?" Minoru blurted—something he rarely did—without meaning to. "Which of the girls, that is?"

The man gave him a queer look. "Her name is Natsuki Kuga. Does that mean anything to you?"

It did, but damned if he was going to admit it. He shrugged as best I could. "I guess not."

The man nodded. "Well, then. Please excuse me," he said, and then stood and was gone.

As he left, Minoru found himself thinking a strange thought. A simple kid's phrase he hadn't thought of in years: _Liar, liar, pants on fire._

As for him, he caught onto what the man was lying about considerably faster than Natsuki did.


	26. 24: Remedy

I am back from the dead, as you might have noticed. It's been quite a while, eh? 'sokay.

Happy one-year anniversary, everybody! Like any good boyfriend, I actually don't know exactly when our anniversary is (no matter how readily available the information is), but I know it's somewhere around now. I figured this would be a good time to break my Marimite spell and come back to you awesome guys.

And so, here we are. Our long adventure is starting to approach its climax, after what seems like a novel's length (and, in fact, is). I hope you've enjoyed yourself nearly as much as I have.

I'm sure you're all wondering precisely what happened to the rest of our party—Midori, Shizuru, Mai, and the like. I think the best that I can tell you is that you might not find out for a while. Or maybe you might, if you're clever.

Yet again, this chapter went through un-beta'd, because it's been long enough. It'll go through sporadic edits over the next few days as I re-read it and think, _the HELL was that shit?_

As always, thanks for reading!

* * *

_I'd die alone, but not for you._

* * *

Chapter 24

Remedy

As soon as he saw the man who was to "escort" him to the jet which was waiting to "take him home," Minoru found himself regretting not taking karate lessons as a child, as though becoming a modern-day martial arts expert might have given him a snowball's chance in hell. In another part of his mind, he compared this to a mouse receiving martial arts lessons to battle an angry housewife with a broom and a shotgun.

Minoru's "escort" was probably the largest man he had ever seen up close—he had seen larger through a scope, and he had always been grateful that they were far enough away that he _needed _a scope to see them. Now he had no such luck. The man was at least six-three, and might have been two hundred and fifty if Minoru could somehow strip and starve him for a few days. He was large, and not just in height and muscle, but in _everything_. He seemed to widen to eclipse the setting sun as he approached Minoru, who shortly realized that he was unarmed, a fact that unsettled him greatly.

"Minoru Alder?" he asked in perfectly coherent Japanese. _Funny. I didn't know mountains could be well-spoken. _

"That's me." _Let's get this through with, huh? I don't have all day to be torn into dog food. _

"That's not all-Japanese, huh." The man observed this as a normal man might have observed the weather.

"Huh," Minoru observed equally blandly, if one discounted the twinge of fear in his voice, like that of a petulant schoolboy being led into the principal's office for a stern paddling. "Mummy was British. Daddy worked for Toshiba."

"Where'd that leave you?" the man's voice didn't change, nor did anything in his face, but as he began advancing on him, Minoru became aware—simply _gained knowledge, _perhaps—that he was about to be beaten, and harshly. He did his best to shrink back towards the chair that was the center of this empty, prisonlike room, trying, vainly, to find something that might save him from having his face broken. He could find none.

_No, that's not true._

There was one. This man spoke with perfect Japanese, but he wore a Swiss pistol. A Sig Sauer. Good pistol. Lot of kick. He wore it in a holster which was unbuttoned.

_Unbuttoned? He planning on using that? If so, why the façade of a jet? I can hear it going in the background. Why did they let me live at all if they were just planning on putting one in my skull soon as nobody else was looking? _

"Royally fucked, apparently," Minoru said, and then the big man hit him in the stomach. Pain erupted as a volcano might, and his air left him violently, so thoroughly that he felt as though his lungs were nothing but vacuum. He sank to his knees, hugging his chest, and looked up at the guy, whose face hadn't changed an ounce. "You planning on killing me here, or what?"

"Well," the man said, "I wasn't actually supposed to; I was supposed to stick you on the plane, which would take you back to Tokyo, where you would be shot in a hit-and-run robbery four days from now, but I had buddies over in Goza. You know."

This did not come as a surprise to Minoru, rather merely validating what he already knew. "Yeah," he said. "I know."

The man hit him again, this time in the face, and Minoru was sent sprawling to the floor, which was an excellent position from which to be kicked in the ribs. Never one to waste an opportunity, the man broke one of Minoru's ribs in just such a manner. Minoru cried out in agony, his eyes welling with tears as he squeezed them shut, and when he opened his them, the man's face, blurry though it was, was remarkably near his.

"Shhh," the man said, putting a finger to his own lips. "You scream too loud, they'll notice you're not on the plane."

Something was funny about the way the man squatted. He didn't squeeze his arms or legs at all when he did it; maybe it was because he thought Minoru utterly incapacitated, or maybe because he just wasn't used to kicking the shit out of a defenseless man.

"And if you do that, I might just have to take something of yours home with me." His eyes traveled low on Minoru, who squeezed his legs together at once, a male-bred instinct. "Matsuda was a friend of mine, you know that?"  
"Never bothered to learn his name," Minoru said weakly, tasting blood. _Just a little too far out. I'm not tall enough, so you have to move just a little bit closer. _Perhaps, then, what Minoru said next was calculated for just this purpose, or perhaps he merely had a smart ass and a smarter mouth. "Kinda forgot to ask him on my way by. Was he the one who couldn't roll over quite fast enough, a little too friendly with the trigger and not quite friendly enough with the scope?"

The man's face twitched at this, and he rose on his haunches, preparing to deliver what would surely have been a death blow to Minoru's face—his thighs were certainly strong enough to dent metal, so breaking a neck couldn't have been any great stretch for him. As he drew back, Minoru lurched forward and grabbed his other leg, and then _yanked, _with all of his not-inconsiderable strength, something the man had obviously discounted.The man, large and strong but no less bound by the laws of physics nor the theories of force and torque than any of the rest of us, dropped, and it was now that Minoru took something home with _him—_he pulled himself forward a little further with speed he wasn't sure he had in himself, and grabbed the big man's testicles first with one, then with both fists. And then, just as the man was beginning to wind up to deliver that death-blow that Minoru was certain he could have, even from his current position, Minoru took his hands off and did not merely _shove, _but _hit. _He smashed his hands into the man's crotch as hard as he could.

The man's testicles did not come off. He was wearing jeans, and Minoru was not inhumanly strong. But when Minoru felt something give underneath his hands and the man began to scream—shriek, really—he knew his job was done nonetheless. The man immediately went into a fetal position. Slowly, painfully, Minoru stood up and took the man's gun from his holster and stuffed it in his own pants, now torn, but thankfully not at the beltline. He pulled his shirt over it, and then slowly, painfully positioned himself over the man, above his head. If nobody was responding to the man's shrieks, probably nobody was in earshot anyway, but people who were used to people dying around them tended to hear gunshots better than screams anyway. A gunshot meant you had to get your head down. A scream meant somebody else hadn't.

The man tried to move. Minoru could hear him grunting, could see him struggling to force his body to respond, to do something other than curl up and nurse its pain. But his testicles had long since retreated into his pelvis, and his body was screaming at him, _hide! Hide and maybe he'll leave you alone! _His nerves were too alight to even _think _about running.

His hands started to move, and Minoru knew that if given the chance, the man might soon do to him exactly what he had done. He was remarkably strong—Minoru thought that if he had just lost both of his testicles to one angry fist and one strong pelvic bone, he might simply die—but his body could not move fast enough to keep Minoru from placing his shoe on the man's neck, and then, after only a moment's hesitation, from lifting it up again and bringing it down, allowing all of his weight to go with it—probably nearly a hundred sixty pounds, though he had not weighed himself in quite some time. Something sickening inside of the man _cracked, _and then he stopped moving, his eyes widening in horror as he realized that he had wasted most of the last air he would ever draw on a useless scream. His face began to turn blue almost immediately, and Minoru wanted to look away, immediately feeling a pang deep inside of him—it was, somehow, always less personal through a scope, and while he had killed people up close before, it had always been with a gun, and never his fist and foot; he could have even killed him with the knife in his belt which Minoru now removed. There was something primal about it, and while some might have reveled in it, Minoru Alder felt his stomach recoil against itself. Another second, and he had lost all of whatever he had eaten recently—and there wasn't nearly as much of it as a doctor might have liked—onto the man's face. This alone made Minoru want to vomit again, almost immediately, and so he turned away and left.

_I had to do it. He would have killed me, and then who the hell would have saved those kids? Because god knows they need saving, just as much as the girl downstairs does. _

_Like you'll be the one to do it, old man. You know exactly what you're planning to do—you're planning on taking that plane back to Tokyo and laying low for the next two months and praying to god nobody finds you. You killed him to save your own life, and that's all there is to it. Nothing wrong with that. _

It troubled Minoru to learn that this voice made a practical sort of sense. Troubled him even more to learn that this voice telling him that killing that man in there so painfully was okay was not the same voice telling him to help Natsuki downstairs and Midori…wherever she was. He had a pretty good idea where he could find out, anyway.

_So do you go, and let your guilt slide? Or do you stay and let it sit on you?_

_Either way, I think I might hate myself for it. _

It troubled Minoru only slightly to learn that this last bit was not true.

By the time he had stretched his arms and legs out—tenderly—and exited the room, the cold detachment had returned to him. But he didn't forget that ugly little moment when he had regretted everything.

He never forgot it again.

* * *

When the amicably-dressed man returned, Natsuki still had not tried out the door to her cell. She believed the man when he said it was unlocked, but she didn't—she could think of no reason he had to keep her locked up, but if that was the case, why was the door even _closed? _Good housekeeping? Nobody here raised in a barn? 

He opened the door without using a key and the point became moot, but her paranoia did not—she supposed that she had every reason to be calm, since if they'd wanted her dead she'd be long for the other world by this point, but this did not invalidate her nagging little suspicion that they were just toying with her—or perhaps using her as a toy.

He was rolling a wheelchair—she had heard it coming down the hallway, _thump thump thump thump,_ the eerily rhythmic noise of the wheels clattering along the cracks on the old stone floor—and smiling at her as he opened the door and went to her to help her up. "You'll be glad for me in just a moment, Miss Kuga," he said cheerily. "Please allow me to help you up, since I doubt you'll be able to move by yourself."

She wanted to shy away from him for some reason, but she could hardly move her own legs, so it was rather useless. The man put his hands underneath her armpits and gently lifted her into the old wheelchair—it _was _quite old, actually; she could see bolts of cloth peeling off of the seat, which she soon found was about as comfortable as sitting on a pole. He was gentle, but Natsuki thought he felt him squeeze a little excessively as he lifted—and not in the way she'd expected a man to squeeze, either. It made her edgy, as did just about everything, it seemed.

"If you're nervous, please do not concern yourself overly much with it," the man said, as though reading her mind. "It's probably a side effect of the drugs we had to give you." The man scratched his beard absently, which had been trimmed slightly since Natsuki had seen him last, though not shaven off entirely. It was little more than a discoloration of his face which happened to make noise when touched.

_Just a few minutes ago it was only _anesthesia.

"Tell me honestly," she said. "How bad _are _my legs?"_ Give it to me straight, doc. Did you slice me open or did the bad guys? Will I walk again? Will you smile if I can't?_

"Not awful," he said. "I wouldn't walk on them today, and I wouldn't run on them for about a month, but you will certainly heal. You should be grateful."

"I am," she said absently, and realized a second later that she only said this because he wanted her to say it.

He began to wheel her out. The thumping was louder now, but just as rhythmic—he was keeping the wheelchair at an utterly even pace. _He's an accountant. They have a thing for exactness. _

She tried to tell this to herself, anyway.

In truth, she just felt helpless. If she really couldn't walk…if she could barely even _think _straight…

A plane started its engine up. She almost jumped out of her seat—the noise couldn't have been more than a hundred feet away, and the vibrations threatened to shake the chair apart from underneath her. "What the hell?" she nearly shouted, and then caught herself. _Calm. Down. If you're really just on drugs…_

_You're not._

_liar liar pants on fire_

"It would seem that your mercenary friend is heading back to Tokyo," the man said. "I offered to let him stay here and work with my sharpshooters, in hopes of rescuing your friends, but it would seem that he has taken the safe road. I can't honestly blame him."

"Minoru was here?" Natsuki said, all sorts of alarms going off in her head.

"I didn't tell you?" the man said, and that little _scratch scratch _sound drifted into Natsuki's ears again. "I'm sorry. It must have slipped my mind. Yes, we were able to pick him up as well. I can't blame him, honestly. We're in far deeper than I think he cares to deal with. From what I know of him, he is a small fry, really. Petty assassinations, mostly Yakuza work."

"Is that so?" Natsuki said, again absently, her mind now reeling from the thought of Minoru abandoning them at this late date. _But why not? He _is _just a hired gun, even if this guy is lying. Just somebody we got stuck with. Somebody who, in fact, tried to kill us. Just a bullet-whore. _

And yet, the thought nagged at her heart. Painfully. Shizuru seemed to trust him. _Had _seemed to trust him. Was he just going to…

_Probably._

"It is."

_Click. _"Did you say that you were working to rescue" _Shizuru _"the others?" _click. The inappropriate directions of a fucked up mind. By Natsuki Kuga. _She fought the urge to giggle wildly.

"I did. I should probably tell you what happened; forgive me, it had slipped my mind."

Natsuki said nothing.

"I'll keep it as condensed as I can—really, I can't provide much gory detail, since I was not there, but I'll tell you what I was told.

"Essentially, your rescue operation was ambushed by a military helicopter operated by…somebody else. Sorry, but I can't tell you who they are."

"Because you can't or because you _can't_?"

"Sharp girl," he said. "Because I _can't._"

"I understand." She did, but she still wanted to scream in frustration. They arrived at the little elevator, which was open and waiting for them. He rolled her in first—_thumpTHUMP, over the threshold—_and then stepped in himself, pressed a button, and the door slid shut. Not knowing was killing her. Not _doing _was eating her soul.

"We had word that they were sending reinforcements, and so we were able to move in a column of infantry and a medical humvee before they could take the survivors from the wreckage. We know they wanted you alive, or they'd have done something more than simply wreck your vehicle. We were able to shoot down the chopper thanks to a particularly acute infantryman, but then our column was ambushed. We were only able to recover you and Minoru before they pushed us back, so we took it as a blessing and fell back. We did manage to get a bead on where they wound up going, so we're staging rescue operations even as the two of us ride up in this pleasantly air-conditioned elevator." The man's voice caught for a moment at the word _pleasant. _"You remember nothing of this?"

"Nothing," she said honestly.

"That's too bad. But maybe it's better that way. Such things are not easily forgotten."

"Did you hear…of any dead?"

"I didn't hear of any such thing, but then again, I didn't hear of much at all beyond what I needed to know."

Her legs began to tingle uncontrollably. She held her mouth shut, but her hands gripped the sides of the chair tightly.

"Are you okay?" the man, once again, was fucking psychic. "Are your legs hurting?"

"No," she said more or less believably. "I'm fine. Just a little uncomfortable."

"I'm very sorry about that, but you don't have to lie if you're in pain. I can get you another injection in a few minutes, as soon as we reach the top floor."

_Liar liar pants on fire. If we could hear the airplane, we're not that far below ground, if at all. This elevator moves slow and you don't want me knowing about it. You don't want me knowing a damn thing about where we are._

"No," she said firmly.

"Are you sure?" Something about his voice told Natsuki that he was asking out of courtesy anyway—she was getting a shot at the top, like it or not.

That meant that she had until the top to figure out what the fuck was going on.

And why she was starting to feel better so rapidly. Why, in fact, she suddenly felt as though she could take on the world—she had not felt so good, so powerful, since the HiME carnival.

Somewhere, far away, Shizuru screamed, and Natsuki didn't know it.

She felt it, though. Something clutched at her heart, and she gripped the handles even tighter.

_I have to get out of here. Right. Fucking. Now._

Shizuru screamed again, and Natsuki thought she might too.

* * *

Five hundred feet in the air and half a mile away from the compound, the small Cessna which had so haphazardly started and lifted off exploded. It was empty at the time of the explosion, and there were three dead men in the hangar where it had been waiting for Minoru, as promised. All three of them had bullet holes in their head. Nobody heard the shots, because Minoru had encountered another man on his way to the hangar, a man who was wearing a silenced American-issue USP. He had wondered at the choice of weapon—after all, wasn't this a Swiss outfit?—but hadn't stopped to think about it longer than it took to gut the man with the knife he'd acquired from the Blue Man. The man had died without thinking about it, and Minoru hadn't felt nearly as bad. Knives were better than feet for the guilt level. 

Men began rushing out of their places at the explosion, weapons ready. When they realized what had happened, they all went back to their posts as though they had been expecting it.

None of them noticed Minoru, hard at work with a small cellular phone pressed to his ear, in a small brick building dubiously marked _generator and backup_.

He was talking to one of his friends.

Everybody had friends.


	27. 25: Follow you Home

Author's Notes:

Not a lot to say here, actually. Working hard as I can.

If you're interested in Welcome to the NHK! fanfiction, check out the link on my profile. If you decide to read it at all, think about leaving a comment to say that you are, even if it's just anonymous.

As always, thanks for reading!

* * *

_I'll stay alive just to follow you home_

* * *

Chapter 25

Follow you home

Dark.

Dark. _Dark. _Dark. _Dark. _Dark.

Dark. The world is dark and rough. The world rubs against her unpleasantly, making her gorge rise from the feeling which is both rough and slimy. That the slime which coats the world is her own sweat and bile never occurs to her, though it has only been twenty minutes since she vomited, and her breathing is stinted and difficult, the air is so thick. The air is rotten, too. It smells like people have died where she is. It smells like more people will die.

The world grates at her small thighs, underneath her crotch and butt, and out behind her. The world digs into her wrists, which have ceased writhing since she vomited. Now the only things moving in this room are her mouth and her small, flat chest, which will probably begin sprouting small breasts in the next year. Looking into this world, nothing can be seen; not even the way her mouth slowly forms words; one, single word, in fact. Listening closely, it is a series of three syllables, repeated in close tandem, but none of them are clear enough to understand. Only that she is speaking them without stopping, and that she seems to have placed everything in these three syllables. Soon, perhaps, even they will stop as the air becomes too thick for her small lungs, already tightened from the smoke she has inhaled. She will not die, but she will feel as though she might when the coughs begin to rack her small body.

The world digs into her back. There are splinters on the world, and she has found them; one was large and caused her to bleed slightly. All of them sting, and they will sting more when she begins to cough, quickly tensing and relaxing the muscles in her back which are now stuck full of wooden slivers.

The world is hard and cold on her legs and buttocks. A single, brave insect crawls near her left thigh, and she knows that she will kill it when it nears; perhaps it knows it too, because it keeps its distance. Perhaps it is waiting for her to die. Perhaps it is used to this routine. The world probably has more insects than this one—she can hear them skittering somewhere, though she does not know precisely where—the world has a powerful echo to it. Even the sound of her breathing, ragged though it may be, is amplified many times over.

She does not know if the world will feed her or not. She has not been in this world for more than eight hours, and her stomach is growling but she knows she can survive for at least another day without food. Water, on the other hand…she expects that somebody will feed her in this world. Otherwise, she will probably end up gnawing at her own flesh. Perhaps this will free her anyway. This does not seem overly morbid to her. Very little seems overly morbid to her. Perhaps nothing does. She is a tough girl at heart, and that is why she exists in the world. Because she is tough, and somebody is afraid.

She thinks, in that small part of her mind which has not shut itself off, conserving energy and waiting, that they have every reason to be afraid. She knows this because of the small tickle that is not only in her heart or stomach or head, but is in all three of those places and everywhere else on her body. It is a tickle which is a bit similar to licking a live wire which is connected to a dying double-A battery; surprising at first, not particularly pleasant, but at the same time, if only faintly…

_Powerful._

Yes.

She feels it.

It will not be long now.

She continues whispering. Three syllables. Three syllables. Three.

Over and over.

Not long now.

* * *

Aoi Senou had only seen three people since she had woken up, and none of them had been Chie Harada; that in and of itself was disturbing, but it made sense in a sick sort of way; she was being swapped around, her cellmates controlled by some arcane schedule whose contents and purpose she could not even guess at. _After all, if we're being held here, they can do whatever they want to us, and I should be grateful that they haven't. _

What really bothered her were the screams.

There were two distinct people screaming not far off—or maybe very far off. Their captivity was being perpetuated in a place which was overall fairly modern—white plastic on the walls, unfathomable machines everywhere—but it still echoed like a castle. The worst of it was that while they were both female screams, she had no idea whose they were. Peoples screams were not related to their voices, not really—she could not listen, and then after a moment, say, "Oh. That one is Chie. That other one is Natsuki."

What it boiled down to, in the end, was that she had absolutely no idea if they were torturing Chie.

She didn't even know if Chie was still alive.

_After the blast, I thought we were dead. That helicopter seemed as big as the sun—the men wearing the patch that's all over the walls here pulled me out and shot it down, and I guess maybe we'd be dead otherwise, but I don't really know. I passed out…I think. Or I was stuck with something._

She didn't think she was, though. Nothing ached as though it had been roughly jabbed, and she knew that if she had been gently pricked, she'd have seen it coming. Aoi Senou was sometimes called a flake, but she was one of the more observant women that Chie knew—second only to Chie herself, she was sometimes told.

Her first cellmate had been Yuuichi Tate. That had been awkward at best, but it would have been worse if he was fully conscious. They were keeping him fairly pumped with drugs, probably because his entire left arm was in a cast which had a fairly consistent red stain on its underside. They hadn't told either of them what was wrong, but Aoi had a fairly good idea; it didn't take a lot of thinking about, really.

Her current cellmate was Mai.

Mai did not look well. She had not been injured, (though none of them—to Aoi's knowledge—had gotten out without their share of cuts and minor burns) but she looked as though she had been in and out of World War One in the time she had been absent. Aoi had tried twice to talk to the girl, but Mai had not even looked up at her. She had simply stayed where she was, half-past fetal, and stared at the place she had come from. This had concerned Aoi far more than the blood dried on the girl's shirt near her hip.

Even worse than that, though, if such a thing was possible, was the girl's flesh. It was completely covered in gooseflesh so thick that it looked as though the girl had developed a hide of skin-covered scales. It was cold and hard to the touch; and there was something else;  
_had to be coincidence_  
it had almost seemed like it was charged with electricity. She had touched Mai each time she had attempted to speak with her, and both times she had received static shocks that had actually sparked in the air. Her memory was dulled by the sheer surprise of the thing, but she could swear that she lost feeling in the limb for a solid ten seconds after, too.

_Coincidence._

_Where would she even _get _that kind of shock?_

Stupid coincidence.

_What does that make Reito, then?_

Stupid coincidence.

It felt a little like somebody was pushing these thoughts into her head. Aoi Senou was not a person who believed in coincidence.

_Stupid coincidence._

Another scream. Aoi dug her fingernails into her palm without thinking about it.

"Chie," she whispered.

_Reito looked like Mai does, only minus the shell-shock. He looked like he was just…exhausted. _Like he had just come back from a five-hour bout of getting his ass kicked by a sumo wrestler, only minus the bruises and streak marks.

_No, that's not quite right._

It wasn't.

It was closer to the truth to say that he looked as though he was still in the ring. Still standing, eighteenth round, and sorry, folks, bellringer's taken ill with the flu, so let's all enjoy the show, shall we?

"She's fine."

Aoi almost shrieked in shock. Mai's voice was haggard and raspy, but it was still a veritable delight to hear. Chie began to slide herself towards the girl, but as she neared her to put a supportive arm around her (Aoi would never outwardly admit that she simply_ needed a hug, _but she did and she goddamn well knew it) a spark _snapped _in the air between them and she jerked backwards with a muffled cry.

Mai, moving slowly, looked up at her.

"Mai," Aoi whispered. "What the hell is going on?"

Mai only smiled emptily.

"Please," Aoi said. "Tell me."

Mai shook her head with the resigned look of a woman facing a firing squad.

"I want to help," Aoi said. "I want to do something. I want to" _find Chie _"…help." She felt that little tug at her, the little thorn in the side of her sanity. That little niggle that threatened to reduce her into a screaming, drooling puddle. It almost seemed like that would be a relief. Probably it would.

Aoi wouldn't let it happen.

Not with the screams.

Not when those screams could still be _her._

Never. And she would be dipped and fucked if she would let one shell-shocked girl—what her father would have called a _numb broad_, much to her mother's discontent—drag her down, even if it was Mai.

Aoi stood up. She walked to where Mai lay, and offered her hand to the girl. Mai looked at it numbly.

"Take it." Aoi's voice rang of the kind of sturdiness that allowed her to tell herself that she was fighting the insanity. After all, when placed in conditions which should drive a person insane, what could a person do? Go insane, or toughen up and fight.

Her father had said that, too. He had been a good man, no matter what his mother had said. No matter what anybody had said. And she would be good too.

Even if it wound up being her next time in those chambers, screaming as they did God-knew-what to her.

"Take it," she repeated. "We're leaving."

"We can't." Mai made a compelling argument. They _were _surrounded on all sides by plastic, and probably behind that, metal. Aoi, however, like a good bastion of strength, ignored this argument.

"We are. Maybe not now, and maybe not for a long time, but we certainly won't get anywhere sitting down."

"That's stupid."

"Is it?"

The truth was, Aoi thought in some dark recess of her mind that Mai had gone insane. That she_ had _gone insane a long time ago, and that the happy, carefree Mai that she had been with after her first year at Fuuka academy and through most of the summer was a sham, a façade that cracked on a whim. The strong Mai was either gone or hidden, and she knew of maybe two people who knew where it had gone. It hurt her a little, knowing she wasn't one of them, but not much, because she was assured in that Mai still cared for her.

After all, she still loved Mai.

_And you, Chie. _

_I'll come for you._

"Take it."

_You sound like a samurai. Didn't they always wind up dying gloriously or committing suicide? Hell, you don't even know how to punch a man without jamming your wrist, and I doubt seriously if any of the black-clad bastards here would care much for you slapping them like a wounded lover. _

_If I were a samurai, I could get out of this joint._

She stopped that train of thought there—self-doubt would get her nowhere. She had what she had, and what she had would do. Wasn't that what Chie always said?

_Or was that you?_

_Don't really care. Sounds too naïve to work in the real world anyway, but fuck it, this hardly seems like the real world to me._

"I'll shock you again."

"If that's true," Aoi said, "I'll deal wi—" she stopped.

The walls.

Covered with plastic, yes, but also with machines. Arcane machinery that looked like it belonged either in the future or the distant past.

Aoi thought out loud. "If that's true, then I think there's something to this place after all."

Mai looked almost vexed. The scream again, and she flinched, and so did Aoi.

"Who is that, do you think?" Aoi tried to speak casually, but it came out strangled.

Mai shook her head. "Don't want to think about it."

Aoi got the feeling that she would have to, like it or not, and in the near future.

Then Mai took her hand, and she felt her entire arm go numb. Her face contorted and she let out an agonized cry, but she made sure that Mai was standing before she let go and dropped to the ground, clutching her dead arm.

At this, Mai's face immediately gained some semblance of life, as though the worry-lines she had acquired over the past year had suddenly reformed themselves, transforming her, like a veritable attractive female Pinocchio, into a real girl. "Are you okay?" she asked, but made no move to help Aoi. This was probably wise.

Her tailbone hurt, but Aoi was otherwise okay. She stood tenderly and gave a V-for-victory. "Just dandy," she said as brightly as she could manage. Feeling started to return to her arm almost immediately, which helped.** "**Feel like I'm drowning, but you know." This was, in fact, a clever way of changing the subject, from _we're in a prison cell _to _my, this is hot weather, don't you think?_

Mai just blinked at her. "What?"

"It's hot."

"And? We're in a prison cell." Mission failed. _Fission mailed. Excuse me, sir, I believe that I have a split atom for delivery to this address, if you'll just sign here, please? Fission delivered. What?_ Aoi couldn't help herself; she began to crack up. The tension in the room broke immediately, and a minute later, Mai began to laugh too, hard; her eyes were red and her lips were chapped and her T-shirt was bathed in sweat and there was a splotch of red on one of her breasts that Aoi thought ought to have been cleaned up after the explosion but she was _laughing. _ Her eyes squeezed shut and she laughed harder than it seemed she had ever laughed before, so hard it hurt, and after a while it wasn't even because it was funny; she was trying to laugh away the fact that she was in a prison cell and Yuuichi might have been dead _and hell he was already dead once I practically killed him what's one more time to have him dead and Mikoto is God-knows-where and we're probably all going to die in this stinking shitpot and Natsuki is dead and god it feels like my lungs are going to explode but not before my heart thumps out of my chest and my brain pounds so hard that it mashes itself to jelly and _Mai was crying now, and Aoi could not move to touch her, to comfort her, because a direct shock like Mai was putting out right now—it actually crackled in the air as she cried—applied to her heart might have killed her. And that by itself killed Aoi a little; the urge to go to her, to hug her, to comfort her as she had once, a long time ago, was almost overpowering, and it was taking every ounce of her strength to keep herself from moving. Tears began to leak out of Aoi's eyes to match Mai's, and that was the best she could do.

But all the while, she thought. She considered. She planned.

By the end, she thought she had something workable. If not for escape, then at least for information.

They had, after all, left them alone in a cell with a lot of very expensive equipment.

* * *

Midori looked like _shit. _When she had asked Aoi to tell her how she looked, openly and honestly, that was what Aoi had said. _You look like shit, Midori. _It was true, of course. Midori's left leg was broken and in a cast and her right wrist didn't seem to want to move more than a few degrees in either direction—_that _wasn't in a cast. _Funny. I thought I just fixed one of these, _she had thought when she first realized that she could barely feel anything below it. Her right eye was sealed shut by a giant bruise. She didn't look like she had been in a vehicle accident; she looked like she had had the shit beaten out of her and then forced back into her. 

But for all of that, Reito looked even worse. With nary a scratch on him, Reito looked the worst. Worry lines had developed out of nowhere on his brow; his look was haggard and his hair had been shaved in the back, revealing a bumpy patch of skin which was slightly pale but mostly red, as though it had been shaved not so much with a buzzer as with a garden edger. His eyes were red and bloodshot, and they never seemed to blink, and when nobody was talking to him, his face slowly worked its way downwards until he was staring straight-on at the plastic floor.

Midori had tried, for the first half-hour of their confinement together, to talk to him. By that point he was nearing his 37th round with near-world Sumo champion Hideto Tsushima, back from his year-2000 loss and intent on working his way to the top. He had done his best to be as jovial as he could, but he came off to her more like a dying dog, trying to lick its owner's face one more time before it finally died, than anything else.

After that, she had slid into silence without too much argument. It was hard, because she was doing her ample best not to think too much about the situation that they were in; in part, because she had already given it a mental once-over when she was in the cell with Aoi, who had actually contributed, and in part because she knew she had a good imagination, which had already threatened to tell her what it thought about her fate—strung up, maybe with chains, maybe just tied to a chair—naked, arcane machines sticking out of her flesh at odd angles, being violated one last time before they threw her in the scrap heap because she was as useless as the machines stuck in her hair.

_No. None of that. _

_Wait. What?_

Midori's head snapped up. She tried to stand from where she had been sitting, but was, of course, unable to. Each time she had been moved, there had been black-clad soldiers, their faces covered by somehow threatening gas-masks, to carry her to a wheelchair. They had blindfolded her for the trip, so she hadn't seen a single part of her captor's stronghold that they hadn't wanted her to see. For all she knew, she could be in the converted bathroom of a fucking train station in Yokohama.

"Reito," she said quietly. He didn't seem to notice, so she said it louder. "_Reito. _Perk up, buddy."

He looked up at her, slowly, and she was struck by how rapidly his face had aged in the past half hour. He looked like he'd been through a decade of salaryman's work. "Wh…" he breathed heavily, as though it was difficult. "What is it, Midori?"

"Let me see your skull again."

He looked at her askew. "What?"

"I can't move, so slide on over here and face the wall." Her leg and wrist sometimes blinded her with agony, but her mother had always told her that if she could push an oversized, soon-to-be redheaded baby out her cunt, then Midori could damn well take some knocking around if she had to. This was usually after she had slapped her for being petulant or some other bullshit. For some reason, this had stuck with her.

Slowly, Reito complied, without question. He even managed a half-cocked smile. A few seconds later, he was sitting in front of Midori, who was sitting leaned against a wall. She pushed aside the small net of hair which had fallen over the bald patch, and then touched that lump of skin very gently. Reito flinched in pain, and when he did, his head pressed into Midori's fingers.

Midori kept herself from gasping, but it was a close thing, as her fingers pressed into something that could only be solid metal hiding thinly beneath skin. She felt its sharp ridges and pins, could almost feel the cold, unforgiving metal it was composed of.

"Reito," she whispered. "What the hell did they do to you?"

Slowly, Reito turned to face her, and the dry expression on his face had been replaced by something which was half-insane, a made-up grin like a clown's face.

"I'm trying, Midori," he said. "I promise I'm trying to keep it out, so please don't touch it, it reminds me that it's there and then it's harder to keep it out." Saying that, he, like most of his friends had at some point in the past two hours, began to cry. Tears flowed out of his eyes, silent and steady; they were eyes which begged for help in a way that Midori could never bring herself to believe that Reito was capable of. He looked like a doll or a child who had been hit one too many times and had come to believe that every raised arm was waiting to hit him, every loud noise was the sound of somebody barreling down the stairs to punish him. He looked like that child at a sporting event, where everybody was jumping out of their seats and flailing their arms around.

He looked like something Midori had once seen in a mirror.

Midori could not think of anything better to do, and so she took him in her arms and held him as he cried.

Sometime shortly after he regained himself, he told her what he was keeping out—really, he felt better after crying, as is often the case—and then held her as she screamed, not in fright or agony but in rage and frustration, her screams echoing alongside those of whoever was being so ruthlessly tormented outside.

* * *

Inoue Nakahara was an excellent negotiator, or at least she considered herself one. However, this man was making things extraordinarily difficult for her. He struck her as a man who had thrust himself into a position that he was not at all ready for. She did not know that he felt the same way about himself. She also thought that he had not had a drink in several days. 

"I told you. It's a simple exchange; a cease fire, and I will present the girl as collateral to that end. No more fighting, and we both win." This was the fifth time he had said something to that end, and it was always accompanied by a thin scratching sound, as though he was an absent sort who needed a shave.

His compromise sounded promising, and she would have loved to take him up on it—she didn't want any more useless skirmishes and attention drawn to their organization than were necessary—if not for one simple issue: He was lying through his fucking teeth, and she knew it. She had done about a billion business deals with "frightened" terrorists like him, and every time her dumbass superiors had told her to take the deal, there had always been at least twenty hiding in bunkers and bushes, waiting to take as many of her comrades with them as they could. This man was no different; his accent was better, that was all.

"Your terms are unconvincing," she said. "I will not order my men to drive themselves into a potentially hostile compound, not even to retrieve the girl."

"And _I,_" he said, his friendly, jovial voice only amplifying her annoyance, "will not consent to driving _my _men into a potentially hostile compound to drop off such a girl." Another lie; they weren't his men. The Swiss Remnants fought in a very specific way, and every time she had predicted their moves using this as a basis, she had been right. It was a very _good _specific way, but she was smarter than that, and they didn't know it, which was why they lost to an inferior force such as hers. That was why the brass had sent her out here even with their army only half-formed as it was, in its initial stages, so to speak: They knew she could do it.

She scratched at the back of her neck, which had been itching all damn day, and touched her hair absently, which had picked up some sort of static charge while she was shuffling around the Commander's office trying to think of a way to do this without getting too many of hers killed. She had even shocked the commander when he had tried to touch her—something she did not feel terribly bad about, since he had been trying to hop into her pants at the time, and she did not feel like shooting him down and dealing with his semi-pouty response at that moment. He was a genius but he was a child sometimes, and that bothered her, even if she _did_ love his childish ass.

"Then we will conduct the exchange in some neutral territory."

"And risk having my forces meet a superior force intent on crushing them just because you decided not to pay my price?" The price—that had been the other thing. All cease-fires required exchange, he had said, and since it seemed that they have plenty of money, that would do. _They're not your fucking troops. Stop lying, asshole. _"I think not."

"You think us so petty?"

"I think you so ruthless, if you'll forgive me for saying so." Scratch. Scratch. Fucking scratch. He was lying through his stubble, and she could hear it over the goddamn phone.

"Then we have no deal," Inoue said. "We will talk later today and work out a compromise, but I warn you that if we do not, you will not be alive tomorrow."

"Nor will most of you." He said it with a note of amusement. Calling her bluff. She didn't have the force to wipe out a regiment of the Swiss Remnants, and even if she did, they were notorious for receiving backup from_ other _Swiss Remnants. He knew it.

_I think._

She hoped he didn't.

If he did, it would be very bloody indeed, and all for one stupid girl who couldn't get herself caught like the rest of them.

Very bloody indeed.


	28. 26: Rolling Star

Author's notes:

The name Aoi's father gives to a CPU—shi pi yu—should be read as a Romanization of Japanese characters, with "i"s that sound like long "e"s. "yu" may be read as "Yoo."

Ten thousand yen is approximately a hundred U.S. dollars.

After reading this chapter, I guess you can probably figure out what I'm majoring in at College. I hope it doesn't read too much like a manual.

I am truly sorry about the wait, as I always am. With 5 or 6 fanfics and my own original fiction AND a bunch of classes, to pass, I don't always have time nor energy for any particular project.

I hope you enjoy it. I hope it's worth the wait. It is always worth the writing if my story makes even one of you have a little bit better of a day.

As always, thank you for reading.

Major props go out to my editor, Sumiregawa Nenene, for making this chapter legible.

* * *

_Show them your fighting pose._

* * *

Chapter 26  
Rolling star

Inoue Nakahara thought that living in a field base was nowhere near as bad as some of the more upper-crust brass claimed. (And really, weren't they all upper-crust if you dug deep enough through layers of bullshit?) At least she had a working shower which she shared with nobody at all, and water which, while not hot, was at least lukewarm. She knew the troops she had in the area were still forced to essentially get naked together and dump buckets of cold water over their heads if they wanted to appear clean, but she had reassured them that she was doing her best to get them some hot water, anyway. They had mostly ignored her. It mattered to them about as much as knowing exactly what they ate every meal, or about the innocuous little white powder that didn't always mix in fully. (The reason, incidentally, that they were able to take those co-ed showers without any incidents, and why a few of the women had discovered, much to their chagrin, that they were starting to develop very fine hair above their lips.)

Such was life when one was in a private army.

Inoue shut the water off and stood in the small aluminum niche for a moment, letting what was left of the lukewarm feeling run down her body—or at least, that had been the plan, until something started buzzing in the office to which her shower was attached.

Sighing, she stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel above her small breasts, and hurried into the other room, feeling almost painfully girly as she held the towel in place with one hand _(not like anybody's going to try anything anyway, most of these men haven't had a stiffy since they signed on, ha-ha) _and ran bare-footed, doing her best not to drench any important papers. _(As if such a thing truly existed.)_ She grabbed the small cellular phone and flipped it open, pressed it to her ear, and heard a voice she did not expect but certainly did not object to.

"Hey, babe," Shiratori Endo said, his voice deep and slightly ragged, a product of age and experience _(and oh, what experience) _both. "Catch you at a bad time?"

"What makes you say that?" Inoue said, turning away from the office window that none of her soldiers were peeking in to, in spite of several having passed it by. She began to make her way back into the bathroom.

"Usually takes you maybe a ring and a half to answer; two if I catch you during a good bowel movement."

"Charming, as always, Shiratori."

"Hey, I don't have to charm you anymore. I'm straight with my wife now."

"Bull shit." Inoue did not believe this because she had slept with Shiratori Endo not three weeks ago.

"Well. Mostly, and I've already got you down."

"You allure me with your wisdom and information, not your dignified speech, and for that, you should be grateful. Am I to assume you've got something fascinating for me, or have you just got your dick in your hands?"

"Now who's charming?"

"Hm. So do you?"

"Of course. Have any of the other men around your place got their dicks in their hands?"

"Haven't in quite a while," Inoue said.

"I still can't believe you'd actually do that, Inoue," Shiratori said, his voice suddenly serious. "That's crossing the line from efficient into…"

"Robots? I think that's the idea. When you've got a tiny little army against the world, you do away with everything that doesn't involve planning and killing out of necessity."

"Everything, huh?"

"Hey, _I'm _not the one we're worried about."

"Because you have a set of tits instead of testicles."

"In so many words."

"That's a little sexist."

"It's a harsh world, isn't it? Did you say you had something for me, or did you just call to give yourself something to masturbate to when your wife is around?"

"I always have something for you when I call."

Inoue stayed silent, now back in the bathroom, her mouth pursed in a thin smile which contained more humor than she gave it credit for.

"You remember Minoru Alder?"

"No," she said at once, because she didn't.

"Sure you do, babe. You met him once at a party with me. Remember, the one that the Kurosaki family threw back in '96?"

"No. I was sloshed that night. That was the second time you got in my pants, and that was how, after the first time."

"You wound me. I was nowhere near as bad as you remember."

"That is because I can remember very little. Small favors."

"Hey, are you all right?" Shiratori's voice showed genuine concern. "I feel like tonight's beating is a little more brutal than usual."

"Just ducky," Inoue said. _Except that unless you're about to tell me that God himself has brought his fist down and smashed the living fuckall out of the Swiss, I'm about to lose one hell of a lot of men unless I can come up with a strategy to rival one of Sun Tsu's. _"How are you?"

"You never tell me things anymore, babe. You know that?"

"I _am _married, you know. And I love my husband very much."

After a pause, Shiratori said, "You know…if I thought you believed that halfway as much as you wanted to, I don't think I would keep doing what we do, babe."

_Fuck you. The last thing I need right now is a lecture about something that already makes my stomach fucking jerk every time I goddamn think about it. Especially a lecture from somebody like _you.

_Fuck this. This, now, is the last thing I need. _And, pushing her feelings back as she always had, Inoue Nakahara shook her head out, water coming out in small showers, feeling a bit like a puppy for a moment. "Did you have something useful to tell me, Shiratori?" Inoue said, "Or shall I hang up now?"

Shiratori sounded…not hurt, but certainly melancholy. "No," he said. "I have something for you. Right now, I'm waiting for a call from Minoru Alder, the guy I just told you about. Right now he's inside the Swiss compound, and I think he's going to blow the whole damn thing."

"_What?_" _Hand of God, man. _"How?"

"They've holed up in an old building, so the whole thing is wired through just a pair of generators. Just one backup and one primary, and there's only like two circuit breakers, and one of them is only hooked up to the primary. It's set up so that if one blows, the other one will kick in after a few seconds, and then if that one blows people are really shit out of luck."

"You're the engineer here, Shiratori, not me." Immediately, Inoue felt that little irritating niggle in the back of her head. It was called impatience.

"I'm getting to it. So, turns out he managed to scrounge up essentially a thick chain and a thicker metal stake. Both of them are made from copper. I have no fucking idea what either of them are normally used for, but it had to be something kinda fucked up, since he says he found some blood stains on both of them. You know what happens when you hook up a power source to ground?"

"_You_ do."

"Smoke. You fry the fucking wire. Circuit breaker's supposed to prevent this, but it's a matter of twenty minutes, some rubber gloves, and a set of pliers to bypass it in an old building like that. You do that to a whole building—hook a thick wire on the other side of the building from the generator just…into the earth, even, and you have a whole fucking building full of smoke and dead equipment, unless you're lucky as all hell and one of your wires was old enough that it fried faster than the rest."

"Can he do that?"

"Inoue, when Minoru Alder sets his mind on something that he thinks will make him feel even a year younger than he is, he can do just about anything, or fucking die trying. Especially if I'm on the phone coaching him through it."

"He's pretty old?"

"He thinks he is. He can't be more than forty five or fifty. He retired a few years back. I guess somebody called him out of retirement."

"Who?"

"He wouldn't say."

Inoue took a deep breath and sat down on the toilet seat. "I don't trust this."

"You don't have to. Call your boy over there back in an hour. If he doesn't pick up, Minoru's done it."

"…You're serious about all this."

"Dead serious." Something rang in the background. "Oh, shit. That's him. Gotta run, babe."

"Call me and tell me what happens."

"I will."

They didn't tell each other that they loved each other when they hung up. Inoue hoped he had to try as hard as she did.

_I love his childish ass. Shiratori is just…_

Grown up.

_Kenji is an adult too, and a damned fine commander. And a dear friend. And he's supportive and intelligent. _

_So then what the hell do you need a lover for?_

Inoue felt that she had been trying to answer that question since she had met Kenji. The best she had been able to do was keep trying to promise herself that she would stop. That she would love _only _him. She thought that maybe she could take her job as her lover, and it usually worked…for a while.

_This time, I'm going to keep my promise to you, Kenji._

One way or another, she would prove to herself that she loved him.

No matter what.

* * *

Three syllables.  
They were starting to become clear now. There was a guard outside her door, and he felt the three syllables treading on the edges of his sanity, where he had previously thought only his wife dared to meddle.  
Three syllables.  
Not long now.

* * *

When Aoi Senou had been only eight years old, before her father started to make money faster than he could spend it on  
_(numb broads)_  
mistresses, one of the things she had always enjoyed—for some reason unfathomable to _both _parents—was watching her father build computers. This had been before his father had the money to blow on  
_(straight ticket outta here)_  
booze, so he had most always been lucid while he did it—grasping the computer case with one end, he would deftly snap pieces into place like a puzzle, his face lax with the sort of concentration usually one usually saw in the very bright or the very stupid. She would always watch from the door to his little work room, never daring to enter, though he must have known she was there, for he occasionally sang to himself songs that she had enjoyed since she was very small. He had always made it clear that she was not to touch his work, not because he didn't trust her, but because it was all very fragile. Aoi had been too young to know the difference at that point in her life, and so she had one day resolved to demonstrate to him just how trustworthy she really was. She had watched him carefully for days, observing closely the point at which he put a little square—what he called the shi pi yu (the name had always made her giggle)—into a little niche on a larger square and then gently lowered the lever, taking care that nothing cracked. 

On this one instance, she waited until he left the room to go relieve himself—of his wife, of course, at a local bar—she hid in a hall closet, and then, when she was quite certain he was out of sight, she crept down the carpeted hallway of the distinctly western house her family had inherited from her aunt, into the room, and began her search for the CPU.

When she found it, she made to grab it, but the instant her finger touched it, an enormous spark leapt from her fingertips, numbing the upper part of her hand and causing her to leap back in alarm, shrieking as the smell of smoke filled her nostrils.

It was then that her father had advanced into the room and sat down next to her and sighed. What he was doing there, she didn't know, but it became clear to her, thinking on it later, that he had _let _her make that mistake. "That will cost me nearly ten thousand yen," he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. She had begun to cry, more out of fear of what the shi pi yu might do to her than what her father might do to her. He held her until she stopped, and then smiled at her gently. "Looks as though I'll have to wait until another day for the bar, anyway. Shall we make a lesson out of it?" he said. He loved to make lessons out of things.

She nodded somberly, and he grinned at her and held the CPU up to the light—she flinched from it, but he patted her reassuringly on the head.

"Whenever I work with these things," he said, "I make sure to hold on to that metal case. That way all the static electricity I pick up from shuffling up and down these halls with you goes away, right down into the earth."

"Did…I break it?" she had asked timidly, and he nodded.

"Computers are very delicate machines. They're made out of tiny little wires and even smaller little machines. When you shocked the computer, all of the wires got fried." He said the last word in English, a word that she had always laughed delightedly at, and this time was no exception, even through her childish terror.

Most parents would have tried to make a life lesson out of the incident—look before you leap, or some other nonsense—but not Aoi's father. That day, he taught her something about computers and electricity, and from that, she developed a curiosity which had spanned all the way into high school. He would have called that _good parenting_.

Aoi certainly did.

The machines which hummed on the walls of their plastic-coated cell were encased in a plastic coating as well, and now Aoi thought that she knew why.

The plastic was cheap, though. There were a lot of things about this building that Aoi thought were cheap. The small glass windows on the plastic doors, for example. Glass that could be easily smashed by a determined girl with an elbow wrapped in cloth.

And cloth was easy. Aoi was wearing cloth. Lots of it.

Uttering a brief prayer to a God that she believed in about half of the time, Aoi asked that if a guard were to interrupt her, it would be once she had her shirt back on. She removed her shirt with only the slightest niggle of modesty—Mai, after all, was much better endowed than she was, and so it was only normal, and besides, Mai was damned pretty. She wore no bra, not because she was _far-out _like that but because it had been burned when she had been captured (she had the burn marks to prove it) and so when she made her way to the window, wrapping the shirt around her elbow, she covered her  
_(baby-feeders they're coming to eat me)  
(don't you dare cry)_  
average breasts with one hand, as much for protection as for modesty. Mai watched all this with more fascination than she had displayed in anything so far, and Aoi thought that if she told this to Chie, the both of them might wind up having some very unwarranted thoughts about the girl, who was, after all, very pretty. (Which was stupid, since Mai was very thoroughly enamored with Yuuichi, and Aoi and Chie were..)  
_(don't)_  
Without thinking too much about it, Aoi raised the covered elbow to the small window and smashed as hard as she could. It splintered with an almost icy _crack_, but did not shatter, and that was just fine by her. She switched the covering to her hand and pressed gently on the glass, now covered by thin cracks like spiderwebs, and managed to procure two very sharp, fairly large pieces of glass for her efforts.

"What are you doing?" Mai asked, her voice actually perking up, though still hoarse.

"Something I'll need your help with," Aoi said, putting her shirt back on as she laid the two pieces of glass out in front of her. "Come here and give me a hand."

Mai made her way towards Aoi, looking almost decrepit as she did.

"Take this. Do you see the plastic seam there?" Aoi pointed towards a spot on the nearest machine. "Get to sawing."

Mai stared at her. "That's…stupid. We won't be able to break that."

"Don't need to," Aoi smiled. "We just need a finger-sized hole is all. Computers are delicate machines, after all."

* * *

Shizuru screamed again. Natsuki felt it again. This time Mai felt it too. 

In fact, it was safe to say that every single person who had killed and died last year in that sick, awful carnival felt it.

Reito felt it too. He felt it hard.

* * *

It spoke to Natuski. It said, _Come and we'll stop._

And, God help her, that was exactly what she realized she had to do. They would kill Shizuru. Fucking kill her  
_(like you killed her)_  
and she would die screaming like that.

But first, she would have to get past this elevator, and the shot waiting for her at the top.

"How is your leg?" the man with the scratchy face asked, and, as though prompted, her leg began to tingle. Like pins and needles it began to tingle. As though it had been simply asleep, and not like the muscle had been cut.

_liar liar pants on fire._

Her side still hurt. She was still cut badly, but she could feel even that healing as a new energy, like a second wind, seemed to pour into her.

"Still the same," Natsuki lied. "Can't feel it."

"Please," the man said with a smile which Natsuki had now determined was very much forged. "You do not need to exaggerate your tolerance for pain on my account. Just a little longer, though, don't you worry."

_Scratch scratch scratch._

"Do you think I could get a new bandage for my side when we get up there, too? Something to hold me together a little better than a soggy piece of cloth?"

If the accountant was bothered by her suddenly-conversational tone, he didn't show it. "Of course," he said. "Planning on doing some gymnastics later?"

She shrugged, forcing herself not to answer, reminding herself that she was not yet _that_ talented of a liar.

The man flipped open his little phone and muttered something into it. After he flipped it closed, he said, "There will be a bandage waiting for you when we reach the top."

"Kind of a long way, isn't it?" Natsuki asked carefully. "It must be a slow elevator."

"Well," the man shrugged. "The base was constructed in a hurry. State of emergency and all that."

"Where are we, anyway?" The second after she said it, Natsuki cursed herself an idiot.

The man paused for a moment, and then said smoothly, "Afraid I can't tell you that either. The Swiss are remarkably closed about such things."

The elevator jerked to a halt, and then the man said, "Well, there we are."

The door was halfway open when Natsuki moved her big toe, and then tensed the muscles in her thigh, finding nothing to move nearly as slowly or painfully as it should if she had just had a strand of muscle cut.

Then everything went to shit.

The door stopped halfway, and for a second, Natsuki wasn't sure what was going on, even as the lights began to break open—shatter, really. Smoke began to pour from just about every little crack in every wall in the building—electric smoke, with its own unique, acrid stench.

People began shouting. A hand reached into the half-opened door holding two things: A needle and a bandage. The man with the scratchy face made for both of them, but Natsuki moved faster, grabbing both with one hand as she stood and shoved the chair backwards with the other. The heavy metal frame slammed into the man and air left him in a _woof,_ and he staggered back, stunned for long enough that Natsuki had time to uncap the needle and jam it into his neck. He uttered a gasp that told her that she had failed to piece his lung as she had been hoping to do, but he went down fast enough anyway as the drugs from the needle ate his consciousness.

"Accountant, huh," she said with a backwards, dismissive look at him.

"You and your ilk will _burn _for your crimes," he said, and then he said something which made her gasp.

"You, and all of the other fucking _HiME_."

The shock nearly floored Natsuki where all the drugs could not.

Then a gun poked its little muzzle into the gap in the doorway, and Natsuki lashed out with her left hand and knocked it aside before it could fire. Grabbing it, she glanced up briefly, spotted an emergency grate in the ceiling of the elevator, and leapt up, knocking it out of place and grabbing onto the ledge with a single, fluid motion. Adrenaline filled her veins, and in a single moment, she felt as energetic as she had during the carnival.

It was a strange, foreboding feeling.

But it was not wholly unpleasant.

Maybe that should have disturbed her. But as she pulled herself up onto the roof of the car, finding herself immersed in near total darkness—whatever had killed the electricity had done it but good, since not even the backup lights were on—she felt simply _alive._

Hiding on the roof, she tended to the wound that she had not felt herself reopen with the bandage she had stolen. Nobody came up after her—maybe they assumed she would be heading for higher ground. That was fine.

The wound wasn't as bad as it had been before.

* * *

Aoi and Mai switched off with shards of glass. In what Chie would have called _true action-heroine style_, they used the glass to tear small, modest pieces off of each of their outfits, rather than simply murdering Aoi's shirt and leaving her bare-breasted. As such, they had only enough cloth for one person, which wound up being just fine. It was harder work than Aoi expected, but that came with an added bonus: Given a focus for her considerable work ethic, Mai looked better than she had in days, just sitting in front of the large plastic protrusion, scraping gray slivers a nanometer's depth off a piece at a time until her wrist tired. 

Between the two of them, it took them half an hour and four shards of glass to dig a finger-sized hole in the device. In spite of the cloth covering, both of them had blood on their hands and arms by the time they finished—if not from tears in the cloth, then from shards of glass that nicked them when what they were using shattered in their hands.

But a finger was all they needed.

Aoi was sure of it.

"This is probably going to hurt you," Aoi said. "A lot."

Mai shrugged the shrug of—and Aoi had no idea where this thought came from, because it certainly wasn't her experience talking—an old soldier. "Have you heard Shizuru screaming? I'm sure it's her—I can feel it."

Aoi had, but she hadn't known who it was. That Mai knew so readily gave Aoi a sick feeling in her stomach.

An ugly little part of her, though, felt relief.

_At least that's not Chie._

"There's things going on here that I don't know anything about," Aoi said. "And you're going to tell me when I need to know, right?"

Mai nodded somberly, not certain if she meant it or not.

"Just tell me this: Does it have something to do with what happened last year at school?"

That ugly little part of Aoi tried its best to put down the feeling of embracing Mai tearfully before their train pulled out of the station last year; the feeling of embracing somebody's warmth for the last time.

It couldn't quite do it.

Aoi hugged Mai again, and Mai hugged back. Her grip was strong now; her task had rejuvenated her. Or maybe it was just her sight that had come back; she knew that what she needed was straight ahead, and once she knew where she was going, she had the resolve to get there, or at least go down hard.

Mai stuck her finger into the little hole. There was a loud _crack_ and instantly smoke began to billow from the hole, and Mai jerked back almost immediately, clutching her finger, which had a nasty purple spot on the tip that hadn't been there a second before. She stuck her finger in her mouth and cursed to herself, taking care not to swear aloud.

This, after all, was the easy part.

The hard part would come when somebody came inside to figure out what the hell had happened.


	29. 27: Astronomy, the first

Author's Notes

Yes, I know, it's been forever. This has actually been done for the better part of a month, but has been sitting in my folder as I neglected to edit it in favor of writing my other stories.

Thank you for sticking with me, as always.

This is a big one, ladies and gents. Very little character development; now we're just going on what we have, because there's no time for them to dive deep into themselves anymore. If you're skeptical at the end, give it some time and a few more chapters, and I promise you won't be.

In case you're curious, Switzerland has four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Romanish (which is another romance language descended from Latin.)

For all of you unbelievers out there, remember that Minoru's mother was British, and therefore he grew up bilingual.

* * *

_The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst / out at you from their hiding place_

_Like acid and oil on a madman's face / his reasons tend to fly away._

* * *

Chapter 27  
Astronomy, part one

Natsuki thought at first that it was just the feeling of drugs wearing off; her heart was beating out of her chest, and her nerves and senses felt on fire. Her limbs were filled with a weird, intense sort of energy, as though she had an extra muscle helping to move each one of them. Her motions were more fluid, more controlled, and she felt more at ease with her body than she had in a long time.

Even so, it was strange to think of having one's first extra-sensory premonition on the roof of an elevator in a pitch-black shaft which smelled of acrid smoke and one's own sweat, but this was precisely what happened to Natsuki as she mounted the ladder—which she found only by the grace of God, as it was directly next to the crawlspace she'd just climbed out of. All at once, the world went…not dark; it was already dark. The world went dead. The clamor below Natsuki—big, angry men speaking in a language she didn't understand trying to force a very jammed elevator door open, trying to rouse the "accountant," trying to, presumably, kill her; the cold feeling of the rusty ladder in her hand; the dull, thumping pain underneath the pins and needles in her side and in her leg—vanished as though it had never been, and all that she was left with was the voice of…somebody who sounded too much like Shizuru to be anybody but her:

_Come to me._  
…  
_Come to me._  
(What is this? I don't have time to fuck around, even in my head. Even about Shizuru.)  
_Come to me, Natsuki._  
(Shut the hell up. Where am I? Why can't I see anything?) Where are you?  
_I'm someplace not far from you._  
(Could this really be her?) I want to come, but I can't. I don't know where you are.  
_You can, Natsuki. It's very close, after all._  
(How is this possible? Did I get hit with a needle full of something?) Are you in this building?  
_No. You'll have to leave, but if you do, it's only a few miles on foot._  
I don't think I can even make it out of here alive.  
_You can, but I'm afraid that you might have to pay for it. Will you still come to me?_  
(I need to get out first.) Pay? Pay what?  
_I can only keep it out a little bit longer, but if you don't know yet, I'll try and make sure it doesn't hit you too hard. The price is very…painful._  
What _price, _damn it? (Is she okay? She sounds as though…as though she's in pain. Can a voice in your head sound that way?) If you would tell me something, I could—  
_I have told you everything I can tell you, Natsuki. You'll just have to get out of there. If you find Minoru, trust him._  
Him? You know as well as I do you can't trust him.

…  
…Shizuru? (Oh god what the hell)  
Words in a language she didn't understand. The voice was male. Not like Shizuru. Shizuru's voice hadn't quite been like Shizuru either. It had been…more raw.

_Since when is Minoru our friend?_

The world returned to Natsuki. No time seemed to have passed, or at the very least, her situation had not deteriorated in the slightest.

_Well, nobody's shooting at me, anyway._

_Yet._

Looking straight up, there was a small pocket of light at the very top of the elevator shaft. It was a very long way up, but it occurred more than briefly to Natsuki that if the power in this building was gone—and it did, indeed, seem that way, though Natsuki had no idea for how long—that this was probably her best bet for getting out.

Unfortunately, climbing the ladder presented a problem: While her arms were fairly strong, and she was pretty sure she could climb on two arms and one leg, letting her funny-feeling leg hang a little bit, (so that she would, hopefully, be able to run when she had to) she only had one arm, since she was holding a gun in the other. She would have to stuff the gun somewhere, and since she was wearing pants—not the jeans she had worn before the shit had hit the fan that night, but almost…

_Is this a prison uniform?_ Strange that she should think about it now, for the first time.

It was a two-piece jumpsuit, and Natsuki hadn't really thought to consider its color, but it was loose except at the waist, so Natsuki figured she could probably hold a gun in there at least temporarily. Maybe. Very maybe.

_I really, really don't feel like doing this, _she thought, but she realized that she needed to keep a gun, so she did it anyway.

_This is probably a Swiss gun, _she thought as she felt around the left side of the gun: There was a four-point safety system (a decocking lever, a firing pin safety, a notch to make sure you didn't accidentally trigger the pin, and a trigger bar disconnecter) and a short barrel, almost as long as the grip itself. Probably a P220. She stuck with just the pin safety: It was important to not blow another hole in her side, but it was also important to make sure that she didn't spend her chance at shooting the bad guys fiddling with a safety system she had only used twice before, and only at an underground range that wasn't actually legal.

She stuffed the gun in her pants and started climbing. It got easier. Nobody found her, since nobody could actually see her. Eventually the meatsacks below her got the door open and managed to rescue the "accountant," but nobody ever really thought to try and shoot her. Maybe they thought she couldn't escape, or maybe they _knew _it.

_Either way, it doesn't bode so awfully well for me._

* * *

For Minoru, the easy part had been bypassing the circuit breaker and blowing the base's power system. With Shiratori coaching him, it had been twice as easy; the man was a fucking whiz with this stuff. 

The tough part, he thought as people started running around the base, which turned into a clamor of noise in half a second, even though it was broad daylight outside, would be getting out of a base which was currently populated by a bunch of loud, very fast, very armed Swiss mercenaries, looking like he did—namely, not Swiss. He had a pistol—a silenced USP—but he was quite certain that even though he was a prodigious close-ranged marksman, he simply did not have the ammo stockpile nor the invincible skin necessary to shoot his way out.

_If nobody shows up to check this room, I can stay here until nightfall and ditch then, but what are the odds that nobody's going to check this room by nightfall? In fact, what are the odds that nobody is going to check this room in the next twenty minutes, being as how I just caused a major power outage?_

Briefly, he wondered if he had killed anybody. He supposed it was possible; really, he had no idea precisely what had happened when he stuck that enormous metal stake into the ground; he only knew that the wiring coming into the building had started to smoke like a motherfucker.

_Real smart, old man. You've got your way in, but you've got dick for a way out. Real smart._

In addition, it seemed that Shiratori wasn't picking up his phone anymore.

It was on thinking this that Minoru realized that he had been played for a fool. Or rather, got the idea into his head.

_Shiratori is shacking up with a woman named Inoue Nakahara when he's not avoiding his wife; I even asked how she was doing while I was trying to wheedle a wire out of its casing. Inoue has a shady job at best: She's ex-military, but not like half of our high-school dropout salarymen are ex-military. She did more than just get learn how to point a gun away from yourself and piddle around a JASDF base; she moved up. Started instituting some major changes in her unit, going so far as to get herself thrown out for slipping the both the male _and _female members of that squad hormone-suppression drugs. _

_You're being paranoid, Minoru. How many good commanders have gotten themselves thrown out of the military? Any one of them could be running the enemy camp. _

_But it makes sense, doesn't it?_

_In that twisted, _life-is-less-a-mystery-than-a-series-of-kicks-in-the-crotch _sort of way that you're so fond of, yes. Stop being a dick. Shiratori's probably boning Inoue right now. Or masturbating. Or fondling women on a train. Or doing _anything _that doesn't involve setting you up to take a fall for the enemy camp. _

Even so.

It made sense. In a paranoid sort of way, it made a hell of a lot of sense.

_Either way, if he doesn't pick up his damn phone and soon, you're probably going to die._

_You were probably going to die anyway. That was what you were going for, wasn't it? Blaze of glory? Can't die of old age, especially not if you die to save some kids you barely know._

_We've been through this. Keep your cynical trap shut. _

The door rattled.

Minoru's stomach jerked. He raised the gun to what he judged was head level, then, since most of the people out there were more Aryan than Japanese, raised it a little higher. Looking down the barrel brought a strange sort of peace to his mind, but his heart was still pounding.

_Before today, I think it had been at least ten years since I killed anybody up close. _

_Hell of a day, huh._

_Huh._

They probably wouldn't take him prisoner again. He was supposed to be dead already, right?

_Thunk-thunk-thunk-wham_.

Somebody was hitting the door and saying something in a language he didn't understand. It sounded like Italian.

_Thunk-thunk-thunk-wham_.

Whoever was out there didn't know that Minoru was inside, that much was certain: Nobody was shouting, and Minoru couldn't hear that tightness of the throat that accompanied soldiers into close, bloody infighting.

_They won't toss a grenade in here. That would run the risk of breaking something _really _important._

_So you'll get to kill two or three guys before somebody in a vest twists in here and takes your head off. Must be your lucky day. _

In spite of himself, Minoru found himself backing up against the wall a little harder. He supposed, in an absent part of his mind, that this was just instinct, but it still seemed silly.

And then something _really _silly happened: Minoru's foot pressed hard against a brick, and it came loose.

_Thunk-thunk-thunk-_crack.

_A brick building with a wood door. _That's _innovation. _

Minoru bent down, not bothering to keep his gun on the door. _Whether you kill one or none at all won't matter for shit, Minoru. If they recognize you they'll kill you, and if they don't they'll haul you in for being in here and _then _kill you. _The brick not only came loose, but pushed out all the way. Minoru's heart did a little loop-the-loop, and for half a second he let himself think that he might just get out of here. _If I can pull a few more bricks, I should be able to dig down and slide out._

_Thunk-thunk-thunk-_crack.

A new voice, with a tone of authority.

The first voice, angry.

The new voice, yelling something.

A jiggle of the handle. _A key? _Minoru froze.

And then, blissfully, the sound of several men walking away.

Minoru pulled three more bricks out from alongside the one that he had pulled first. He realized that this was bound to make the building very unstable at some point, but rationalized that probably not all of the bricks were loose like this. Nowhere in his rationale was that even a little brick shack probably had an underground foundation.

_Click._

Minoru whipped around just in time to see the door open. Just in time to see a big white man pop his head in and say something in Italian.

Minoru froze, and then some strange, untapped circuit in his head kicked into gear and he turned around. A big man peered in and gave Minoru a funny look, and for a full half of a second Minoru was quite sure he was about to be killed.

Then the moment passed, and Minoru thought without thinking, planned without concentrating, and bent down, grabbed one of the tools—which, he did not take time to consider—that he had dropped so carelessly when he was finished with them and began to unscrew the circuit breaker's lid, which he had entirely neglected during the course of his sabotage, as though he had been simply startled by the noise.

He knew, but did not actively consider that he could not speak to these men in Japanese.

He thought that if he could communicate on any level with this man he could claim to be some sort of contracted worker, but he did not think up a believable back-story to support this.

He had an idea that as long as he acted confident, he would be accepted, but he did not justify this by pointing out, rightly, that every mercenary unit had to repopulate on the fly sometimes, and so could not be picky about recruiting exclusively from one place or another.

And then, he said in the English that his mother had taught him, "I think there's a problem with some underground wiring. Also, this building is very unstable. If we get some time, we should move the generator to someplace more stable." He prayed to a god he did not fully believe in that the man did not notice the large metal stake that was connected to the ground and the other end of the circuit breaker, and moved subconsciously to block it from view a little better, even though it was already shrouded in shadow.

The man paused for a moment, and then said, also in heavily accented, very clumsy English, "Why did you lock yourself in?"

Minoru managed to say, "Loud outside,"without stuttering. "I should have the power back on in a few minutes."

"Good. Very sorry my men scared you. Dumb bastard didn't ask for the key." The man laughed heartily.

"Don't worry about it," Minoru said.

"Leave the door open," the man said. "Smells awful in here. Like smoke."

"You got it," Minoru said, his heart thumping.

Then the man left and said something loud in Italian. Laughter.

Something loud over a loudspeaker somebody had dug up.

Minoru let himself relax very slowly.

_I can't turn the power back on. Even if I could, if Natsuki is making a quick escape, she probably wouldn't appreciate it._

Minoru made a show of fiddling around with the circuit breaker for a while, and then somebody popped his head in again and said in English, "How is the power?"

_Fuck it._

"The wires are fried," Minoru said. "All through this building. Do you have a gas generator?"

"Can get one."

"There's probably a backup lighting system somewhere. I can find it and we can get lights at least."

"Okay. I will find a generator."

"Thank you."

The man shouted something else, and the men began to leave, their footsteps sounding with a practiced rhythm. And then, it was quiet around what was very nearly Minoru's grave.

Minoru bolted. Nobody saw him.

But he didn't bolt towards the exit. He could have probably made a show of trying to get cell phone reception and walking out towards the forest, and dressed as he was—very plainly—he might have been able to make it, too.

Instead, he went for the compound again.

--

Natsuki was about three-quarters of the way up when her assumption came back to bite her in the ass.

More accurately, her assumption dropped out of her ass. Her gun, with no sign that it was even loose, perhaps due to a misplaced foot or a too-quick motion, or maybe just due to the fact that if there _was _a God in his heaven, he really, _really _didn't like Natsuki, slipped off of her waist, fell down through her pant leg, and clattered down the ladder to make a very, _very _loud _clank _on the roof of the elevator.

_Oh, shit._

She started climbing faster.

It was easier than it had been when she'd started. Her leg barely even hurt anymore.

_What the hell is this? Before I could barely even move my leg, and now it's like nothing happened to it. This can't just be adrenaline. _She confirmed this by moving her hand to her side, and then to her leg. No blood. The gashes were gone.

She made it to the top and popped her head up for just a second, checking to see if it was clear. She heard somebody speaking very loudly in a Romance language of some sort—probably Italian or Spanish, she couldn't tell—through a microphone of some sort—probably a hand-held loudspeaker—and she saw a pant leg.

_Shit. _

_Hold on._

It was a jean leg.

_Military types in jeans?_

The leg bent down, and Minoru Alder was crouching next to her, all at once. His eyes went wide.

"_Natsuki?_" he mouthed, and then, without saying another word, offered his hand and helped her out of the shaft.

_Minoru?_

When she was up and out, she looked at him.

"What are you doing here?" Natsuki whispered to him.

"Listening to a rousing speech, obviously."

"Cute."

But, she thought, it was. A little. He was obviously scared—she could see that in the pale tint of his skin, in the way his eyes moved a little too quickly whenever he looked around.

He noticed. "It's been a long time since I've been this close to this many people who want to kill me," he admitted. "I'd feel a lot better if I were a quarter mile away holding a rifle."

The honesty made her smile. "It's been a long time since I've been in this kind if situation too," she said, and he nodded, apparently unsurprised. _Does he know?_ "And last time I had a bit of a leg up on everybody."

He nodded again. "This time, instead of having a leg up, you have a good-looking old man with a pistol."

"You have a gun?"

"I figured it was better than a slingshot."

She smiled again.

And just then, her assumption, which had already bitten her posterior badly once came back for another go, apparently tantalized by the flavor of her buttocks. Because apparently, somebody _had _heard that gun drop. And that same somebody had known the layout of this building well enough to know where the ouside exit to the elevator shaft was.

And that was when Natsuki and Minoru found themselves surrounded by about ten large men with assault rifles.

And the accountant.

_Oh, shit._

"Minoru Alder," the accountant said, his voice raspy. Minoru smiled.

"You're a pretty bad liar, scratch-ass," Minoru said, the tightness of his voice destroying his confident image.

The accountant raised an eyebrow. "Are we twelve now?"

"I wonder."

The accountant shrugged, and Natsuki said, "Do you know this man, Minoru?"

"He hired me to watch you, originally."

"Oh."

"Kill the man," the accountant said. "Take the girl. We no longer need her as a bargaining chip, but we'll need her later."

"Are you sure, sir?" one of the soldiers said in Japanese.

"Positive. You have your orders. Tonight at sundown."

"Sir."

Minoru moved himself slightly in front of Natsuki, and it was now that Natsuki had her second extra-sensory premonition, in an equally inconvenient time as the first:

_Natsuki. You have to pay the price. We all do._

What price?

_You know._

_(I do know but I don't want it oh god there's nothing I want less I would rather die)_

I can't. I can't go back to that.

_You have to. We all do. We don't have a choice. He can't keep it out forever, and neither can I. You can't let Minoru die, not just yet._

How do you know about that?

_I'm connected now. It's so…so painful, but even then, it's not half as painful as what _he _feels. Let me relieve him. His pain…it hurts me, as well. _

(Comprehension. Bitter comprehension.)

…Will we have to do it again, Shizuru?

_I think there's a way to stop it this time, but we will have to be quick._

I don't want this.

_You're a strong girl, Natsuki._

I'm not.

_You are._

I can't even say things I want to say. Not even to myself.

_I love you, Natsuki._

But I can't say it back.

_Try. Try and then if I die, I can die happy._

What?

_They will kill me if they don't get results soon. There are plenty more of us here. _

…

_Please, Natsuki. Please trust me. Trust _us.

I…can't.

_You can._

How can you say that?

_Because I know you as well as you know you, but unlike you, I won't lie._

How? How can you know anything if I've never let you in?

_You have. You are too stubborn to notice, but you have. _

How can you say that?

_Natsuki, please don't make me repeat myself over and over._

There's no time anymore, is there.

_There isn't. It's time. You will have to trust me._

I…do.

_Hearing that makes me very happy, Natsuki. _

Thank you.

_Save that. You may not want to thank me shortly._

And it was true. For in the next instant, something hit Natsuki so hard that for a moment she was sure she had been shot.

But in the seconds following that, as a green, incandescent light began to radiate from her hands, she knew it was much worse than being shot.

* * *

_Three syllables. _

_Not much longer now._

_Three syllables._

_The door guards are long gone now. They've fled from the madness they hear inside the cell. The voice is ragged and worn now, because it has been speaking for hours straight, without ever stopping, now so quickly that it has become frightening._

_mi…  
ro…  
ku…  
miroku  
miroku  
miroku miroku miroku miroku miroku mirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumiroku_

_Something hums through the air. The guard is being changed, and two men are wandering towards the door, wondering where the other guards went, cursing because they'll have to report the bastards for abandoning their posts. What a pain._

_The guards don't hum, though. After a second, they hear it. Where is it coming from? It seems like it's coming from a wall. _

_One of the guards presses his ears to the wall, and a second later the hum becomes nearly deafening. The guard has just enough time to pull back in horror and then the wall splits bursts open and an enormous sword, nearly the size of the man himself, cleaves him in two. The other man doesn't even have enough time to be shocked. The sword seeks him out and severs his head, and then bursts through the wall and lands parallel to the Entire World, which has splinters and edges that will leave her back permanently scarred. It cuts through the thick chains which bind her to the Entire World, circling her little crotch and waist and wrists and thighs. It makes a sick little _splash _because it lands in a pool of her vomit. She has stopped coughing now._

_Because the power is there again. It is no longer like touching a barely-live battery to her tongue. Now she has taken the plunge and hooked it straight to her heart, which thumps as though it will burst out of her chest. This is exciting. This is exhilarating. This is_  
power  
_yes. Power. They have hurt Mai, and by her power they will live only long enough to regret it._

_And no longer._

Miroku dragging behind her, scraping maddeningly on the metal floor, Mikoto begins to walk.

--

Aoi and Mai's plan did not work as they had planned it, but that was coincidence. In truth, it might have—a small team had, indeed, been dispatched to their cell when their monitoring device went offline.

But then, something happened. Shizuru's screams stopped, and then Reito screamed, a single loud, piercing scream which contained the feelings of a man who has failed.

In truth, it was not his fault. But that did not stop him.

And then Midori began to scream as well; that same frustrated, angry scream that she had let out before.

And then Mai began to scream. Her body began to spark in Aoi's arms, and before Aoi could even think about letting go, she was thrown back against the wall by an invisible force strong enough that it ought to have knocked her out.

But it didn't, and that wasn't what scared Aoi the most. What scared Aoi the most was that now _she _began to spark as well. Something new and intense pounded inside of her, and suddenly, she was _aware._

_Chie is alive._

_Chie is alive and in this cell block. _

"Chie!" she shouted as loudly as she could.

_A…Aoi? _The reply came hesitantly, and Aoi's heart leapt and suddenly nothing seemed wrong with the world anymore.

_That was in my head. That was not out loud._

_What the hell?_

_I don't care. It's _Chie. _She's alive. _

"Where are you, Chie?"

_I'm in a cell with Shiho. She's acting really funny…she's just…screaming. Loud. Why can I hear you in my head?_

_…What? _

Aoi had no more time to think about it, because in the next instant, the door opened and seven armed guards forced their way into the cell and surrounded her and Mai, who had not stopped screaming.

"Shut her up," one of them said, shouting to be heard over the piercing screams which came not only from Mai, but which echoed all down the corridor.

And now all of them were screams like Midori's. Rage. Frustration. That feeling only felt in the face of something enormous and evil which you know will consume everything you love, which you are powerless to stop.

"Jesus Christ," the soldier said. "What is this?"

And then, all at once, Mai stopped screaming. She stood up straight, her shirt in tatters, her eyes once again blank and somewhere near insane.

"Mai," Aoi whispered, and then stood and moved to her, feeling no pain when she should have had a concussion from being hurled so hard.

She took her hand.

"What's going on, Mai?"

"You can feel it too?" the other girl whispered.

"Yes."

"Then I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"You'll know soon enough." And then, to the solders, "You should leave. I don't want to kill anybody."

"Keep your mouth shut," the soldier said. "Sit down and stay quiet. I don't know how you managed to break that damn thing, but we'll have to move you to a new cell now."

"No," Mai whispered. "You don't understand at all. None of you understand, and that's why none of you are going to survive."

All at once, the entire hall was silent.

"You tried to contain us," Mai said. "But you don't understand that that's impossible. Your machines can hold us, but the problem is that _you _can't. Your machines can control that energy, but _you _can't. Not even _we _can."

The soldiers took a step back and raised their weapons. "We can call it a misfire," one of them said. "At worst, we'll be thrown out."

"It's too late for that now," Mai whispered, and tears began to well in her eyes. "I'm very sorry. I'll try not to kill you, but I can't control it either. It's too strong."

Mai was kind, but she was still human, after all.

Though, now, not wholly.

* * *

Inoue Nakahara was just beginning to receive damage reports when her husband and the general commander of their army, Kenji Nakahara, touched her shoulder and received an electric shock powerful enough to knock him on his ass. A moment later, something powerful and electric flowed straight through her, barely stopping at all, and she let out a horrified scream and fainted.

* * *

Midori hugged Reito tightly from behind as the soldiers burst into their cell. Both of their eyes were filled with tears. 

"I'm sorry," he whispered to her.

"Don't worry about it," she whispered back. "We can deal with this. _He _is still dead, so it can't start again. It can't."

"But now it's me."

"I have faith in you, as does Shizuru. That's why she told you to let go."

"Stand up. Keep your hands where we can see them," one of the soldiers commanded. They all wore the same black uniforms they had the night before. "Nobody move."

Midori did, but Reito couldn't.

"Get him up."

"Shut it," Midori said. "He's in pain. It's amazing he's still conscious, you insensitive bastard."

"Our orders are to keep you both standing. Satou," he said, turning to one of his comrades, "get him up."

"Sir."

Satou walked towards Reito, and Midori saw her opportunity in an instant. It was in the way he walked too quickly, not taking time to consider his footing as carefully as he should. He was probably new, eager to please.

Midori moved faster than anybody could believe, herself included. It was just that her body felt on fire, charged with energy she hadn't felt since the HiME carnival. It made her a little sick, but mostly it gave her strength and she was grateful for that.

And she knew, felt as clearly as she might have felt a strong wind, that if she got outside of the cell, she would feel even more power.

_The HiME carnival can't start again. It's impossible. The Obsidian Lord _is _dead. The star should have been destroyed too, but something must have happened. I don't know what. Maybe it can never really be destroyed. Maybe the star was just in incarnation of something else. We can figure that out later. _

_Without the carnival, we should be able to avoid killing each other this time around._

_But then, why do I get this feeling of futility whenever I think about it?_

In one instant, the soldier was moving towards Reito. In the next, Midori was in front of him. She lashed out with a high kick that landed directly in his stomach, sending him sprawling backwards, and Midori moved in then, seizing her chance, plowing straight into the whole group of them, winding up in the hallway with three still inside, dazed, and three outside, on the ground.

The energy nearly knocked her over.

Then it was in her hand. The blade was sharp and polished, the shaft sturdy. Just like she had left it.

Looking at it, she knew she should be relieved, but she couldn't feel anything but sick.

* * *

A/N: 

Yes, I'm aware that the HiME didn't have any sort of telepathic or electrical powers in the series. Yes, all of this is deliberate; their powers are not quite the same as they were in the series, and this will make sense. Trust me on this one, guys.

As always, thanks for reading!


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